


and the bells were ringing out for Christmas day

by futuredescending



Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: A Christmas Carol AU, Angst, Disabled Character, Ghosts of Christmas, Harry Hart Lives, M/M, Original Character(s), Top Eggsy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-05
Updated: 2016-02-05
Packaged: 2018-05-14 17:15:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 26,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5751565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/futuredescending/pseuds/futuredescending
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On the second Christmas Eve after V-Day, a miserable and embittered Harry Hart is beset upon by three familiar ghosts. Or: A Kingsman Christmas Carol. Sadly with less muppets.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Beginning

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



> Prompt: “A Kingsman AU of a Christmas movie. I like pretty much all Christmas movies, so I'll let you pick which one you want to do for this prompt.”
> 
> This isn't really all that AU I realize now. And Christmas has long since come and gone, but pfffft. This is my favorite Christmas movie, so I was sold on this prompt immediately.
> 
> This fic started out intending to be nice, brief, and fluffy. 27K words later, this monster happened. I’m sorry.

It was Christmas Eve, and if one asked Harry Hart if he wished, some fourteen months ago, that Valentine’s bullet had finished the job, he would have unhesitatingly said yes.

It was now Hour Three of being cloistered within his office, and he was still only a quarter of the way through sorting out the increasingly labyrinthine state of Kingsman’s finances. The beginnings of another debilitating migraine were sounding the call to arms across his temples, the socket that had once housed his eye was throbbing with the ache of absence; his hands had started their shaking over an hour ago, making everything he touched or reached for feel as tenuous in his grip as a house of cards.

Across his desk, he heard Merlin sigh. If Harry bothered to open his eye, he’d undoubtedly witness his friend hunched over with horrible posture, clenching his jaw in muted frustration as he pored through the contents of his tablet. Neither he nor Merlin enjoyed number crunching, or paperwork for that matter, but whereas Merlin still had his fair share of bureaucratic experiences by necessity of heading up an entire department, Harry assumed he’d die in the line of duty before he’d ever see the day he’d get put behind a desk.

Fate, however, hadn’t been so kind.

“What about the Normandy investments?” Harry asked, already having an inkling as to what Merlin would say. “There has to be at least several hundred million—”

“Gone,” Merlin said. “Chester had those portfolios drained and re-routed to Valentine’s accounts as a show of good faith in his New World Order. Along with the Grail and Lake investments.”

Which meant approximately 35% of their funds were now tied up in the hands of the newly UN-appointed task force assigned to clean up after V-Day, and likely never to be seen again. “Shit.”

“Indeed.”

It wasn’t like Kingsman was suddenly _broke_ , but the sheer size and operation of the organisation took astounding amounts of money to fund, from their fleet of jets and motor vehicles to R&D department’s discretionary budget, the upkeep and security of the vast number of estates Kingsman owned all over the world to, at its most basic level, simply the cost of keeping the lights on and servers running. As it stood with their current figures, and only if they were very careful, Kingsman would be out of operation within the next five years thanks to Chester fucking King, who had nihilistically threw in his (and Kingsman’s) lot with a madman under the assumption the world was about to get a clean sweep anyway.

The migraine had now fully blossomed despite the massage Harry was applying to the bridge of his nose and a few fortifying swallows of scotch. He could have sworn it was pulsing in tune to _Jingle Bell Rock_. “Send a message to all personnel: effective immediately, we’re going to have to tighten our belts, be more selective in our operations and cut back on staff. I’ll compile the list of redundancies within the hour.”

At this last, Merlin made a guttural sound of protest as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing, which, _really_. That was rather rich coming from a man who drew great enjoyment from psychologically traumatising recruits. “Harry, it’s Christmas Eve. You really want to start giving your employees the merry gift of a severance package?”

“At least it will temper their impulse to overindulge during the holidays,” Harry snapped out, at last reaching his wit’s end, and dear god, it wasn’t just his pained hallucinations—there _was_ music playing. And since the estate was of solid construction, the music had to be playing very loud indeed to reach all the way to his office. “ _What_ is that blasted music?”

“Harry—”

But Harry was already struggling to stand, silently cursing the cane he now had to rely upon as all his motor skills had more or less been shot to hell along with half his face, the career he loved, and his entire life as he knew it.

He undoubtedly made a pathetic sight: a crippled and maimed old man with severe scarring and a disgruntled expression hobbling angrily if unevenly through the estate’s corridors to find the source of that infernal music. And as he neared that source—Kingsman’s largest common lounge—the music had increased by several decibels as to be near deafening, but that hadn’t been what caused Harry to freeze in his tracks.

No, it was the _decorations_. Everywhere. No moulding or window had been left untouched, as if the spirit of Christmas had gone on a week-long bender all over the room. Garlands hung from the ceiling, enough fairy lights to hemorrhage London’s power grid had been wound around every nominally vertical structure, poinsettias had been set upon every horizontal one, and the centre of the room had been cleared in an artless manner to make space for an enormous, four metre, equally-artlessly decorated spruce. Harry glanced up, and yes, that certainly was mistletoe hanging above him.

Amidst the holiday rampage were two maniacally gleeful dogs—a poodle and pug, respectively—chasing each other amidst the boxes and heaping piles of detritus one finds one’s self with after apparently buying out the entire fourth floor of Selfridges, and two of Kingsman’s newest agents currently in the midst of what appeared to be a massive tinsel war with severe collateral damage.

Harry’s initial attempt at dignified offence—frowning sternly at the tableau before him while impatiently waiting for its participants to notice his displeasure—was met with complete obliviousness, so he hobbled over to rip out the iPod that had been blasting its playlist of Christmas music through the estate’s audio system.

“Arthur!”

“Hey, what—oh, hey, Harry!”

In the abrupt silence, Roxy and Eggsy froze and attempted to affect some semblance of professionalism despite being half covered in scraps of silver and gold ribbon. Roxy had the grace to appear somewhat abashed, a light pink blush colouring her cheeks even as she refused to flinch under the weight of his glare. Eggsy, however, was grinning at him unrepentantly, the little berk.

“What do you think you’re doing here?” he asked, making a conscious effort to remain calm.

“Uh, decorating for Christmas?” Eggsy answered, lifting his shoulders in a wordless addendum of, _What’s it look like?_ “Merlin said—”

A brow went up. “ _Merlin_?”

As if on cue, Merlin appeared in the doorway, took one glance at the scene before him and almost started backing out again. “Ah, right. Before current circumstances were discovered, I might have allocated a minor sum to improvement activities for employee morale several months ago when I was acting Arthur.”

“ _Improvement activities_?” Harry’s glare now turned itself upon Merlin, who only narrowed his eyes in response and clutched his tablet tightly in front of him in preparation for using it as a makeshift weapon.

“It’s Christmas Eve, Harry!” Eggsy implored, drawing Harry from his staredown. “The place was looking pretty dour. Me and Rox thought it could use a little sprucing up.” He smirked and gave one of the branches of the monstrous tree a smug flick with his fingers and sending a shudder through the ornaments dangling from it.

Roxy almost rolled her eyes. Harry could see how they ticked up and paused at the 11 o’clock position.

“And did you ever think,” Harry began softly but with an unmistakable undercurrent of danger that sent everyone’s hackles up, “there was a reason for that? Did you ever stop and think not everyone here even celebrates Christmas? Or wants to, for that matter? Did you even ask or did you do what you’ve always done, which was to unwillingly subject us all to your obnoxious holiday spirit while spending thousands of pounds Kingsman can’t afford on all this frivolous shit!”

By the end of his impromptu tirade, his voice had risen sharply. JB, the wild little beast, began barking fiercely at Harry, perceiving him, rather aptly, to be the target of the newly introduced rancour in the room. Anger beat at his temples, a staccato throbbing of hot pain that sparked bright halos across his vision, forcing him to squeeze his eye shut with a grimace.

“Harry…” Merlin started.

“It’s Arthur!” Harry cut him off sharply, taking deep breaths to keep the sharp bout of nausea from overwhelming him. When his stomach had been wrestled under control, he dared to speak again. “You’d do well to remember that. I want all of this taken down immediately. I hope you’ve saved the receipts, else it comes out of your salaries. And someone get that bloody dog under control!”

As Eggsy rushed to settle JB, Harry turned to leave, only his clumsy feet refused to heed his will and he stumbled forward with a yelp. He’d have gone arse over teakettle had it not been for Eggsy’s quick reflexes reaching out to keep him upright.

“You okay?” Eggsy asked softly, features furrowing in concern despite the flush of shame still tinging his cheeks.

And that, there, was precisely the softness that was nigh on unbearable now. Harry didn’t _deserve_ it, and Eggsy was foolish to give it away so liberally as he did. “Galahad,” he said, pulling away from Eggsy’s hands, trying to shore up what remained of his dignity. “Once you’re finished cleaning up, please see Merlin for the details of your next assignment. You’ll be departing tonight at 7pm.”

“Tonight? But—”

“Is that going to be a problem?”

“It’s just that it’s...well, tomorrow’s Christmas, Ha—sir. I was hoping I’d be able to spend it with my family. It’d be our first real one since—”

“You forget you’re a Kingsman agent, Galahad, and a junior one at that. The world doesn’t always give us the luxury of taking holidays off. Now, I ask you again, will there be a problem?”

After a long pause, Eggsy finally muttered, “No, sir.”

“Good.” Harry turned around and refused to look back. He didn’t want to see the disappointed expression that Eggsy could never hide very well around him. It was bad enough he was given the full impact of Merlin’s thunderous expression and a glare that, if looks could kill, would have resulted in Harry being be nothing more than a charred spot on the rug.

He didn’t know which was worse: that he could cause such expressions on his best friend’s face on the regular now, or that he wished his friend would follow through and finally put Harry out of his own misery.

 

______________

 

The late afternoon found Harry laid out over the leather sofa that didn’t quite hold the entirety of his limbs, a hand covering his eye in an attempt to further block out the room’s already dimmed lights and him occasionally swallowing back the sour taste that kept wanting to crawl up the back of his throat as a preview of worse things to come. It painted a less than dignified picture, all things told, but at the moment, Harry couldn’t find it in himself to care. 

When he heard the door open softly and light feet move into the room, he didn’t even twitch. There was only one person within Kingsman who had never learned to knock. “I locked that door.” Only the manual one though, which, upon reflection, had been a gross oversight.

“If you can call that thing a lock,” Eggsy scoffed.

Harry heard the door close and Eggsy shuffling about, clearly fidgeting. “Christ, Harry, you look awful.”

“Do stop, you’re making me blush.”

“Did you take your meds?” Eggsy persisted. Eggsy took it upon himself to memorise Harry’s medications schedule once he discovered Harry didn’t always follow it exactly to the spirit and letter. Harry still hadn’t forgiven him for that one.

This time, however, desperate times called for desperate measures. “Twenty minutes ago,” he confessed, knowing that the freely given admission would clue Eggsy in as to how bad it was this time.

“I’m gonna fetch you some things that'll help.”

It was all Harry could do but sigh. He wanted to tell Eggsy not to bother, wanted to ask _why_ given the all too public dressing down he’d earlier given him, wanted to ask why Eggsy still cared, why he always tried to take care of Harry from the moment he’d truly woken up after a twelve-week coma to red-rimmed green eyes filled with so much _joy_ that Harry had stupidly wondered if he were gazing into the face of an angel.

(He’d later blame the brain trauma for that one.)

But before he could find the wherewithal to even wet his lips, Eggsy was gently moving his hand away from his face and replacing it with a blessedly cool flannel. There was the light clink of china nearby and the wafting scent of chamomile to accompany it. Harry felt the cushion dip a little beneath Eggsy’s weight, frowned at being jostled about as Eggsy slipped in behind him until Harry ended up with his head cradled in Eggsy’s lap and Eggsy’s nimble fingers moving in gentle circles at his temples to ease the incessant ache. The migraine soldiered on, but these small balms spurred a grateful moan before he could stifle it.

“I’m sorry,” Harry sighed after what could have been anywhere from five minutes to a few hours of almost peaceful quiet. He didn’t specify what for, mostly because there were far too many things already that an apology couldn’t hope to make up for.

“It’s alright,” Eggsy said easily. “You was feeling poorly. Merlin says you been working too hard.”

“That’s no excuse. It never is.”

“Is that better?” Eggsy asked, clearly wanting to change the subject. Not that Harry could blame him. It was hardly the first harsh word Harry had hurled at him, not even the third or the tenth. Too often, Eggsy found himself the unwarranted target of Harry’s increasingly foul moods simply by virtue of the fact he sought Harry’s company so often. Therefore, it was just as often Harry found himself apologising, but he knew the words were wearing thinner with each iteration.

“Yes,” Harry said instead of all the things he really wanted to say. The pain medication finally began to kick in and already tension was slowly bleeding from his limbs. “Thank you.”

Eggsy seemed to take this as his signal to go, gently lifting Harry’s head up so he could slide out and stand before replacing his warm thighs with a soft pillow. “Have to go get ready.”

Ah, right. The reconnaissance mission Harry had given him, mostly out of spite. “Eggsy.”

“Yeah?”

“The mission can be delayed another 36 hours. You should take the day to be with your family tomorrow.”

Even without opening his eye, Harry could practically see the look of confusion, hope, and hesitance twisting across Eggsy’s face as he worked out how to respond. “But...”

“You’ll report into HQ at 10am the day after tomorrow. Go home, Galahad.”

“Yes, sir.” Less hesitation this time. Good. “Would...would you like to join us?”

For the first time in a long while, Harry was taken off guard. “Join you?”

“For the Christmas dinner. I mean. If you haven't already got plans. We don’t do anything fancy but this year’s been good to us and we’re inviting everyone over, so really—”

“Thank you for the offer, but no.”

“Oh.” He could detect the disappointment in Eggsy’s tone, and it was still a wonder. Had the boy really wanted his presence darkening his family’s dinner table? “That’s alright then. Figured I’d ask. Invite’s still open if you change your mind.”

Not bloody likely. Harry could think of very few things more torturous than subjecting himself to Michelle Unwin’s accusing stare and pointed remarks while he banally complimented her on the roast, resigned himself to Daisy’s sugar-fuelled shrieking, and pretended he enjoyed even an ounce of the Christmas season when he hadn’t since...well, as long as he could remember, actually.

He didn’t reply, letting Eggsy simply assume he’d fallen asleep as the gentler rejection rather than risk hurting him with more careless words.

He nearly regretted it when he caught the softly spoken _Happy Christmas, Harry_ before Eggsy left.

 

______________

 

It was well beyond any reasonable hour when Harry finally lagged through his front door with the desire to do little more than swallow enough scotch to pass out for a few blissful hours. He was in far more pain than he cared to admit, the hours after Eggsy’s brief respite having been spent trying to make further headway into Kingsman’s affairs, which did little to alleviate his mood nor his lingering migraine. 

As he went to hang up his coat, the glimpse of himself in the foyer mirror gave him pause. Harry had long ago resigned himself to the fact he would always be in some state of pain. Too many nerves had been damaged irrevocably and now fired a continuous stream of mixed up signals throughout his body. But beyond the wearying, unending ache and periodic sharper flare ups, it was simply exhausting, and the evidence of that erosion was reflected back at him now in deepening lines, a grey pallour and equally greying hair. To say nothing of the web of fractured pink scars that cut swaths across the left side of his face and into his scalp from not only Valentine’s bullet but the various surgeries that had followed in order to reconstruct half his skull.

It was a miracle, he’d been told, that he had survived at all, much less recovered to the extent he had. By all rights, he ought to be grateful to see another Christmas, but in being able to gauge how diminished his life had become, how diminished _he_ had become, he couldn’t quite find it in himself to feel festive.

The first glass was imbibed faster than was gentlemanly, but Harry found himself putting forth the effort to keep up appearances less and less these days, and there was no one ever around to bear witness besides.

He took his nearly forgotten anti-seizure medication with the second glass despite promising his doctor he’d stop doing that.

By the third glass, he had sprawled out in the wing back chair before the lit fireplace with some bizarre Christmas film about singing puppets playing on the telly, his one concession to the godforsaken holiday. He tried to recall the last time he had spent Christmas Eve with someone. Three years ago, he decided, when he went through a bottle and a half of scotch with Merlin. One of his better Christmases, that.

By the fifth, his eyelids were heavy, his head swayed and finally curled towards his shoulder in drowsiness. The half-empty tumbler slipped from his numb fingers and fell to the rug with a dull thud. His last conscious thought before he fell into the thick torpor of sleep was Eggsy, and how the hurt shining in his eyes was somehow always more painful than anything his damaged body could produce.

 

______________

 

Really, he’d been meaning to throw away that bloody antique clock that made the most godawful noise at all hours of the night if he forgot to switch it off. In fact, he couldn’t recall when or even _why_ he had switched it on again. Nevertheless, the urgent loud clash of those blasted chimes resounded through the quiet of the house and jarred Harry into full alertness. 

Both the television and the fire had long since gone out, leaving the room dark and cold. Harry shivered and struggled out of the chair with stiff limbs that refused to obey him. He’d left his cane in the foyer, because his pride often trumped his common sense. With a huff of frustration, he made one last shove off the seat of the chair only to trip over his fallen glass and crash painfully to the floor, smashing his elbow against the side table on his way down.

 _This is it_ , he thought as he pressed his cheek against the rug. _This is the lowest point of your life. Well done._

He didn’t know how long he remained lying there in a pile of decrepitness before it dawned on him that the clock _hadn’t stopped chiming_ , surely having gone well past the maximum twelve. 

“And a malfunctioning clock as well.” Perfect. Just like something that was once his mother’s to keep nagging at him well beyond any point it logically ought to have done. He should have had the thing chopped up for firewood ages ago.

But as he struggled to stand again, a cold clink and rattle of metal rose up between every grating note, shaking within the very marrow of his bones until it overtook the chiming itself. Not just any sort of metal – _chains_. He was more than intimately familiar with the sound and feel of those.

Harry retrieved the gun he had taped to the underside of the table and rose smoothly, heart-pounding adrenaline giving him a renewed strength and vigour he hadn’t experienced in months. With all his senses honed, gun out and safety off, he methodically canvassed the room, moving on to the dining room, kitchen, and downstairs loo. Mr. Pickle still glared back at him in a reassuringly accusing manner as always.

He ascended the stairs slowly, avoiding the spots that emitted the noisiest creaks and groans. When he reached the first floor landing, he could see the soft glow of light emanating from beneath his closed office door at the end of the hall. With a mind now fully focused on his target, he silently approached the room, twisted the knob, and threw the door open hard enough to let it smash satisfyingly against the wall as he moved in, gun at the ready to teach any would-be opportunistic burglar how very mistaken they were in coming to _this_ house tonight…

“Well, look who it is! Guess it’s that kind of movie after all, man!”

...only to freeze in horror when he came face to face with Richmond Valentine and his assistant, Gazelle.

But only for a moment: Harry was pulling the trigger in his next breath, two clean headshots right between the eyes with unerring accuracy, the steadiest his hands had ever been.

Except, the bullets lodged themselves within the walls behind them in a puff of plaster and newspaper instead of blood and brain matter. Neither Valentine nor Gazelle ever so much as flinched.

It was then, in his bewilderment, that Harry noticed several things: while his bullets had made no impact in human flesh, there _was_ a gaping hole in Valentine’s chest that was continuously seeping blood. And while Gazelle bore no such obvious external injuries, her skin had taken on an alarmingly toxic green tint along with a spiderweb of blackened veins that grew more dense from her right forearm.

Valentine, who had noticed Harry’s examination, glanced down at himself before quickly looking up again and swallowing back visibly. “Oh, this?” He waved at his gaping chest wound. “Still don’t do too good with blood. You’d think being dead, it wouldn’t matter but no, man. I still feel like I’m gonna spew and this one hurts like a son of a bitch. Really sucks. But I guess, when you think about it, we all die as we live, right?”

Valentine’s lips stretched wide to reveal formerly bleached white teeth stained with blood.

“Is this some sort of joke?” Harry found himself asking faintly, hoping against hope Merlin would pipe in from somewhere right now to confirm as much, even if it meant he’d have to strangle the man.

“Does it look like we’re joking?” Gazelle coolly asked. She was balancing herself precariously on one bladed foot with a hand on Valentine’s arm to keep her balance. It was the most graceless he had ever seen her.

“Then why are you here?” Harry demanded, the initial fear that had gripped him was now seeping away to make room for, apparently, absolute fury. “Isn’t it enough for you to have _shot me in the head_ , or do I now get the added benefit of a perpetual haunting as well?”

“To be real with you,” Valentine said, “I was kinda expecting to see you on the other side, you know? Dodged a bullet on that one. Well, so to speak, I guess.” And he even had the nerve to appear briefly ashamed before brightening once more. “But let’s not get so caught up in the past! Because that’s just it, Mr DeVere: the past is the past is the past. And ain’t nothing gonna change it now. So why don’t we just let bygones be bygones?”

“Oh god.”

“Trust me, man. God’s staying far away from any of this.”

“I’m finally cracking up,” Harry continued, finally lowering his gun. The initial spark of energy that had driven him was all but gone now, leaving him feeling weak enough to reach out and lean against the edge of his desk. “It’s the stress, surely. This is an hallucination. Mixing my meds with alcohol again. I knew I shouldn’t have done it. Or maybe a dream. I’m dreaming this right now, aren’t I? You’re both nothing but figments of some overdosed nightmare. Or—”

“We’re here to give you a warning,” Gazelle cut off Harry’s increasingly desperate mutterings. “At the rate you’re going, you won’t be here by this time next year, and you will not like where you end up.”

“Better listen to Gazzy,” Valentine nodded. “The endless torment, fire, and agony thing? Yeah, turns out all that shit’s real! Spent too much time trying to save the world that we forgot about the people who live in it. There’s a special place for those like us, and we’ve got a spot waiting just for you.”

 _Like us_ made Harry clench his teeth to keep from snapping back that he was _nothing_ like Valentine. “I find it rather rich that a genocidal madman and his pet assassin are warning me about the impending fate of my soul.”

“You can ignore us all you like. We’re just the welcome wagon, man. But don’t say we didn’t warn you, cause it’s like this: you’re gonna get three visitors. They’ll have a lot to say about the way you’ve been living your life, and if you know what’s good, you’d listen to them.”

“Wait.” Harry frowned, regarding Valentine and Gazelle incredulously. “How foolish do you think I am, exactly? I’m quite familiar with the story, and now I know this has to be some sort of trick. You can go back and tell Merlin he’s had his fun but if he thinks he can give me a new lease on life with a few pseudo-paranormal scare tactics and a sob story of a dying child, then he can get stuffed. Now get the hell out of my house before I find a way to make my next bullets take.”

“Can’t say we didn’t try,” Valentine said with a shrug and then a grimace for the way it must have pulled at the wound in his chest. “Hell, I wish someone did this for me back when I was alive. But then, I’d probably be the same as you, tell them to fuck off because what do they know? But I was wrong. I was so fucking wrong and this thing I do now? Wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. And you, my man, are not my worst–oh, fuck! This all we get? This can’t be it! No, wait—!”

Harry, frowning at Valentine’s increasingly distressed tone, opened his mouth to ask, “What are you–”

The metal chains Harry heard earlier materialised seemingly from thin air and curled around the two ghosts, as sensual and final as snakes ensnaring their prey.

Harry ought to have been happy to see it, but instead all he felt was foreboding. “Valentine…”

“Game over, man.”

“See you in hell,” Gazelle managed to choke out before both she and Valentine were slowly eased down into the floor, their immaterial bodies sinking through the rug and wood as easily as a sharp knife slipping between one’s ribs, being pulled down to somewhere deep and far, far below.

Not that Harry had the time to process what had just happened, for as soon as they disappeared, the lights in the office winked out, and so too did the last of his consciousness.


	2. The Past

Harry awoke sweating, heart pounding, mouth dry and utterly foul tasting, with a rolling stomach and sense of deja vu washing over him. He was lying in his bed, wearing his night clothes, but for some bizarre reason, he thought he ought to be waking up on his office floor instead.

 _It was just a dream_ , he thought, running his hands over his face as if to shake loose the sense of unease still clinging to him. He needed to stop drinking so much. He really did. At least before bedtime. Nothing felt right, but this time, the sensation transcended the usual physical complaints born from his body, like a current of electricity coursing through the air.

The chiming of the clock gave him a start, ringing once....before quieting down.

Harry had been holding his breath, not quite sure what he was expecting, but when all remained as silent and still as one would assume past midnight on Christmas Eve—well, technically Christmas day now—he released it in an exasperated huff and started to berate himself for being so ridiculous.

That was, until the door to his bedroom was thrown open and a small blur of a figure dressed in a trailing white nightdress bounded through it, throwing itself at the foot of Harry’s bed—he could _feel_ the weight of it—and crying out in a joyous girlish voice: “Harry!”

It was a voice that was so familiar and yet unheard in so long, he had forgotten precisely what it had sounded like. When Harry opened his eye, it was as he had both feared and longed for: an impossibly young, round face, tight blond curls, big brown eyes that were the same as his own.

“Helen,” he found himself croaking for the lack of air getting to his lungs, his whole body seemingly paralysed in disbelief.

Helen grinned in delight, grabbing onto his blanket covered feet and shaking them. “Harry, you look so old and _ugly_!”

He choked out a surprised laugh, his limited vision blurred with the unexpected sensation of, god help him, genuine tears, and a stony lump took up residence in his throat that he swallowed back only with incredible effort. “I’m afraid that’s what happens when one insists upon living, sweet girl.”

She only scrunched up her face as she had always done when Harry said something she didn’t understand—another expression Harry only just remembered, and the awareness of how much he had forgotten made his heart ache all over again. “Come on! You need to get up now.”

“Do I?” he asked, wondering if he could even stand. Given the sheer number of close brushes with death he’d encountered over the course of his career, he’d had his fair share of out-of-body experiences, but never had one been sustained for so long nor so _acutely_ , with all five senses alive and confirming this waking reality. Harry found himself pushing back the covers and swinging his legs off the bed, soles solidly hitting the chilly floor. His legs were as shaky as a newborn foal’s, but he remained upright, automatically reaching for the dressing gown he always left on the chair by the bed and tying it around himself like a coat of armour. All the while, he couldn’t keep his gaze off the little girl in the room, fearing if he so much as glanced away, she’d disappear.

“I’ve got something to show you,” she said almost shyly. “But we don’t have much time.”

“How could I refuse you anything? Go on then, lead the way.” At the last moment, Harry reached out and grabbed his glasses, slipping them on and stealthily turning on their recording feature. Whatever this was, a dream, an hallucination, or some sort of impossible reality, he had to at least try to make some empirical grasp on it. He was too much of an agent not to.

Not that Helen was aware of any of it, or if she was, she didn’t seem particularly concerned as she reached out and took hold of Harry’s hand—which had always been larger, but now it nearly swallowed hers up entirely—and yanked him forward with a surprising amount of strength for such a little body. “Come on!”

“May I ask where we’re going?”

“Home!” she responded brightly, looking at once overjoyed at the prospect and exasperated with his slow comprehension.

Harry opened his mouth to respond, he had so many questions—nevermind logistical concerns—but quickly shut it when the scenery around them began to bend and blur sickeningly. It did his already precarious stomach little favours and he found himself swaying, anchored only by Helen’s firm grip, swallowing back saliva and the threat of sick before the world just as swiftly righted itself once more.

Only, once he had recovered his bearings, Harry was startled to realise he was no longer in his bedroom nor in his house nor even in the whole of London.

The Harts were not as old money as they’d have liked, but they had still insisted upon an ancestral home on the northwestern edges of Oxfordshire, a sprawling old estate Harry had promptly sold in 1992 when his mother finally passed on. He had rarely given his childhood home much thought nor particularly regretted his actions since, but as he slowly walked down the main hall of the ground floor, he was reminded of how beautiful and warm the house could be when his mother had it decorated for Christmas: white lights only, all silver and gold ornaments with flourishes of deep green for colour as needed. Real wreaths on the doors, real boughs of holly on the walls, silk red bows and the deep woody scent of chopped logs permeating the air.

“Do you remember it, Harry? How much I love Christmas?” Helen shouted as she ran ahead of him, tearing down the hall with a wild, carefree abandon that inevitably earned a scolding from the nanny.

No one yelled at her now. No one seemed to exist anywhere in the house at all, which was odd. The one thing Harry could fondly recall about Christmas at home was how busy it had always been, bustling with visitors coming and going, the household staff continuously preparing for a series of feasts his parents liked to host and the groundskeepers working outdoors to clear the walkways of the freshly fallen snow.

In fact, for all the loveliness of the house, there was a distinct air of abandonment that permeated the elegant but unoccupied rooms, the decorations seeming more like a veneer of cheer hastily plastered over a widening chasm of emptiness.

Harry’s steps slowed and then stopped as he felt something cold and hard coalesce in the pit of his stomach. He remembered this Christmas.

Helen seemed to realise something was wrong almost at the same time. She ran back to him, nearly bowling into his legs and knocking him over but for the way she latched onto his dressing gown and looked up at him imploringly. “Where is everyone?”

Unable to voice an adequate answer, Harry took hold of her hand and solemnly led them down the rest of the hall and into the foyer where he knew at least one person would be. It had been cheerily outfitted with decorations and lights as the rest of the house and was equally empty save for the lone little boy sat upon a polished wooden bench, clutching at a new Sleigh Ride Dolly Darling, red-faced and sullen. He didn’t look up at the two new arrivals. He didn’t seem to notice them at all.

“Is that for me?” Helen asked, pointing at the doll in the boy’s hands and glancing up at Harry in confirmation. “I don’t remember getting it.”

“Because I never gave it to you,” Harry said, remembering how by the end of the night, he had thrown it into the fireplace and caused the whole room to smell like burnt plastic for weeks after. They had to replace all the fabrics.

At that moment, the overwhelming silence was at last interrupted by a small group of adults descending the stairs: a maid who was sniffing and trying to wipe the tears from her eyes with the backs of her hands, an older gentleman with a kind face carved in tempered sorrow, and Miss Hewitt, the nanny, solemnly listening to the man’s—the country physician, Dr Lowe, Harry recalled—quiet words.

“I can’t help but think there was more we could have done!” the maid suddenly burst out, somewhere between a sob and exclamation. “We should have brought her to hospital!”

“Calm, Miss Lincoln,” Miss Hewitt chided, ever the stoic pillar of British restraint that Harry remembered. “You know hospital was too far away. We did all we could have done.”

“We missed the signs. How could we have missed it? Had we only gone sooner…”

“Miss Hewitt is correct,” Dr Lowe said, “You could not have known a simple bout of illness would have progressed to this extent. Young children are particularly susceptible at this time of the year. At the risk of sounding callous, sometimes these things just happen. Her soul is safe in God’s hands now.”

By the time they reached the ground floor, the little boy had stood up, staring at the adults with an expression more suited to facing down an army. It was Miss Hewitt who caught sight of Harry first—the younger version of him, for the older version seemed to be nothing more than an invisible audience amongst the players of this scene. Her dark eyes, which were usually so hard and forbidding, were softer now, Harry noted. Exhaustion made the fine lines around them more pronounced.

A look was shared among the group before Miss Hewitt nodded to the maid in a commanding gesture of dismissal. “Miss Lincoln, please get Doctor Lowe refreshment while we wait for the coroner.”

“I’m very sorry this happened on Christmas of all days,” Dr Lowe said, looking over to the boy as well. They had been too far away from Harry at the time for him to have overheard their muttered conversation, but he could hear everything now. How very strange it was to see himself from this point of view, pre-pubescent, clenching his jaw visibly in helpless rage.

“I don’t remember this Christmas,” Helen said to Harry, startling him. He had forgotten she was still there, so quiet she had been throughout the whole exchange. To see her now leaning into legs as whole and hale as she had been when he had last seen her alive was both immensely comforting and yet deeply melancholy. She frowned up at him, brows furrowing. “I don’t remember any more Christmases, actually.”

It was Miss Hewitt who came to the boy—him, Harry—placing a gentle hand upon his narrow shoulder and guiding him back to the bench.

“I want to see her,” his younger self demanded of his nanny, though she didn’t scold him for his lack of manners. “She’s going to be alright, isn’t she? She will be alright?”

“I’m so sorry, Harry,” Miss Hewitt said. “We did everything we could, but Helen has gone with God now.”

Harry watched his younger counterpart’s face as Miss Hewitt's words slowly sank in. Later in his life, he’d learn how to perfect his mask, but for now, his young face was an open book sharing the tale of a tragedy.

“But I have to give her her gift.” His younger self tried and failed to hold back his tears. His skinny frame seemed to all but crumple in on itself as Miss Hewitt swept him into her arms and Dolly Darling fell to the floor.

“There were no more Christmases after that,” Harry said, watching himself being rocked in the arms of his nanny, who was more his sister’s nanny by that point, and who would soon be dismissed from service all together in a week’s time. He couldn’t look away, glued to the scene before him as if he were driving past a particularly gruesome accident. As if he were driving past an accident and his own body was on display out on the blacktop, broken and bloody. “We stopped celebrating them. _I_ started hating them.”

The death of her youngest child seemed to snuff out all affection and hope within his mother. She had never really recovered, and her interest in her remaining child’s life had dwindled into obsolescence no matter how many accolades he received or achievements earned. He’d spend the rest of her life futilely trying to win back her love.

His father had never been particularly interested in either of his children, and so with his sister’s passing, Harry would become an orphan in all but name. He’d be sent off to public school and he’d stay there over the long breaks between terms. He’d work very hard at his studies. At uni, he’d spend holidays pursuing his medical degree and soon after, enlisting in the RAMC. He wouldn’t see his home again until the death of his father some twelve years later.

“I would have very much liked your gift, Harry,” Helen said to him, finally drawing Harry’s gaze away from the past. Her face was solemn, absent of all her previous childish innocence.

“I would very much have liked to have given it to you, my sweet girl,” Harry said, smiling sadly.

Once again, Helen was tugging at his hand. “Come on. We still have more Christmases to see.”

“Helen, darling, I’m so tired....” There were no more good Christmases after that. Harry shook his head, tried to resist her pull which only seemed to inexplicably increase in strength, as if a force beyond his reckoning were propelling him forward. 

It could not be helped. Time seemed to swallow him up. The world around him bowed as if stumbling to the end of the play.

 

______________

 

When physical reality re-emerged, Harry found himself within his old musty rooms at Oxford, facing his barely twenty-two year old self, who was currently sitting huddled on his bed much like he had been on that bench all those Christmases ago. He was still so painfully skinny. His hair was rather regrettable, fluffy tufts untamed and seeming to want to run in every direction at once. Beside him, Helen giggled and scampered over to run her fingers through it, though of course, his younger self remained oblivious.

“I’m not being unreasonable, Harry!” a voice spoke sharply from behind him, prompting Harry to turn and confront the beautiful and furious face of his first girlfriend and one-time fiancee. She was glaring past Harry, down at his younger self, arms crossed tightly over her chest, spine rigid with a long pent-up frustration. Harry recalled how much her wrath could make him wilt, such a ferocious thing it could be. “I’m going to spend the rest of my life with you, but I feel like you’re not even here with me right now!”

“Gemma,” his younger self sighed, exasperated, as if they had this row several times already – and, in point of fact, they most certainly had to varying degrees. “You know I don’t go home during the break.”

“Of course, I know that!” Gemma looked nearly offended he’d think otherwise. After a moment of studying him, she switched tactics, softening her stance and moving to sit next to him on the bed. “I know you don’t get on with your family, Harry, so come be with me and mine for Christmas! You already refuse to have dinner with my parents when they’re up from London. For god’s sake, they’ll be your in-laws! Is that really so much to ask?”

But gods, his younger self, his stupid, oblivious younger self, remained obstinate. “Final exams are coming up next term. You know how important this is for me. I simply cannot afford any distractions!”

Gemma’s eyes narrowed. “So all I am to you now is a distraction?”

“I didn’t—” His younger self closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I didn’t mean it like that. Look, it’s important for me to make my own way here. Not all of us have a position waiting for them in their family’s business. I need to focus on this one thing, and this one thing only for right now.”

“Why is she so angry?” Helen asked, staring in confusion at the two young lovers who seemed now to be anything but.

“She’s angry because I failed her,” Harry replied softly. “It was a recurring motif in our relationship.”

Gemma scoffed. “Oh, come off it! Harry, you only use that excuse when you don’t want anything to change. Every little step forward in this relationship has been like trying to move a mountain, and it’s only me making the effort. We’ve been seeing each other for six years. I’ve never even met your parents. You didn’t even tell your mates we were engaged! Christ, Harry, sometimes I wonder why you even proposed in the first place.”

“I proposed because I love you!” his younger self nearly shouted, thoroughly annoyed. Seeing the petulance written across his unlined face, the way he had thought this whole argument was ridiculous and unworthy of his time, Harry was rather appalled with himself.

Because he would miss it: the way Gemma’s shoulders sank in exhausted defeat. The way she was no longer yelling, no longer, in fact, even angry. Just unbearably sad as she said, “Yes, but I’m beginning to realise I’m never going to be the one thing you focus on for once.”

She had patiently waited for six years, knowing how much his forward trajectory was important to him, how he always had to dedicate himself to pushing for more and more in his life: swinging from one goal to the next in some unending race, wondering when she’d get to be one of them.

“Don’t be absurd,” his younger self said dismissively, still not getting it, and how painful it was to watch now knowing what was soon to come. “There’ll be plenty of time after graduation, I told you.”

“No, there won’t,” she said with finality, enough so that even his younger self had eventually cottoned on and sat up in alarm.

“What do you mean? Gemma?”

Harry watched as she removed her engagement ring and placed it in his upturned palm, closing his fingers over it. Watched as his younger self only stared at their joined hands.

“I hope you’ll have the life you’ve always wanted, Harry, but I’m afraid I can’t wait around anymore in hopes of getting to be a part of it.” She kissed the corner of his mouth, lingered there as if to memorise the way it felt to freely offer up one’s heart to another for the breaking.

He had been too numb to react, not even looking to her as she got up and walked out of his life. She’d later marry a very nice man, a doctor who worked with MSF. They’d travel overseas and would settle down in his native Lebanon, where they would both be killed by a suicide bomber in 2002.

“Come, Harry,” his sister said, taking his hand once more. Harry went without resistance, barely feeling his feet move in front of each other.

 

______________

 

“Christmas is coming up soon. It’d be nice to finish this up by then,” Lee Unwin admitted with a small smile that curled up one half of his face. It was a familiar gesture, one Harry had seen on on Eggsy’s many times. “Nice Christmas gift, right? Becoming a Kingsman agent. Being able to give the missus a nice house and some nice clothes, lots of toys for my little one. It’s everything they deserve.”

“When you pass this next test tomorrow with flying colours, you will very much do so,” Harry said (all pompous arrogance, now that he looked back upon it). Lee looked up to find his mentor regarding him with a satisfied expression that stemmed from validated pride.

His home office hadn’t changed all that much throughout the decades since he first bought the townhouse. The walls were still red, though there were slightly fewer tabloid covers on them. The furniture was older if still fashionable, the tech almost comically bulky. But Harry still sat behind his desk, and his candidate still sat in the chair opposite in the far corner, each man with a celebratory scotch. The dog test was always widely considered to be the most harrowing, but both James and Lee had passed. In fact, the last two remaining candidates for the Lancelot position were so evenly matched, it would probably come down to the barest sliver of a technicality to decide who would finally succeed. Victory was so close at hand, Harry couldn’t have been happier, and not the least because it was annoying Chester to no end to see a boy from the estate—a teenaged father, no less—rise to the top and surpass his wealthier, better bred counterparts.

“I can’t believe it’s almost finished,” Lee said. His eyes held so much natural warmth. Lee had such an earnest, boyish face that at first Harry had wondered if he’d even make it past the first night of training, but he never should have doubted. Beneath that open expression lay true grit and the heart of a soldier. “I can’t thank you enough for this opportunity, Harry. For taking a chance on me. You saved my life and my family.”

“Nonsense. I’ve looked into your records and accomplishments; I knew you had what it took to be here. More so than anyone else in your cohort, more so than, dare I even say it, Mr Spencer.” Lee looked like he wanted to argue that one. He and James had become as close as two rivals could be towards the end. “And even if I never showed up at your base, you were always going to do something great with your life, because you could never do anything but.”

(“No, Helen, I don’t want to watch anymore,” Harry—the older, sadder Harry—turned away from Lee’s bright, happy face to the apparition of his dead sister, dread curling up in his throat.)

“Speaking of Christmas, I noticed you ain’t got many decorations up,” Lee said. “Not one for celebrating then, are we?”

“Not really,” Harry replied, taking another pull from his glass, buying time in which to carefully compose an explanation. “I generally find myself quite busy with work at this time of the year. As someone without much in the way of family, I’m usually assigned to missions over the holidays, leaving other agents to celebrate with their own loved ones.”

Lee frowned. “Bit unfair if you ask me. Surely you still got friends you can celebrate with.”

“Actually, I prefer things as they are. Whereas some find their fulfillment in family, I choose to find mine in my work.”

(“But you’re so happy here,” said Helen, looking between Lee Unwin and his mentor.

“Not with what comes after. Not that. Please, I beg of you—”)

 

______________

 

“Fucking missed it.” He could barely hear himself. His ears felt stuffed and itchy with cotton.

Every breath stung his lungs, the acrid scent of blood, charred flesh, metal and sand lingered in his nose. His whole back felt hot and numb from the forceful impact he’d made with the ground, and he knew it would turn into a tapestry of deep bruising later.

Lee was curled over the remains of Falcon in a parody of protection for a dead terrorist instead of the other three men in the room who were still trying to recover their wits and shake the ringing from their ears.

“...How did I fucking miss it?”

(“ _No—_ ”)

 

______________

 

“What’s your name, young man?”

“Eggsy.” The little boy was quiet, hesitant in the proximity of a stranger, but unafraid as he gazed up at Harry evenly.

 _My god_ , Harry had remembered thinking. _You look so much like your father._

“Hello, Eggsy.”

 

______________

 

“STOP!”

Harry turned away from a young Eggsy curiously examining his father’s medal, still blissfully unaware of the full meaning of his father’s permanent absence and what it would do to his life. He wondered how his past self had kept his composure as he single-handedly destroyed a family. He remembered feeling as raw and throbbing as an exposed nerve.

Even as he felt that way now, past excavated and indistinguishable from present.

Helen stopped shaking Eggsy’s snow globe and looked up at him from where she sat cross-legged on the floor, her face set in polite curiosity.

“Why?” Harry implored her. “Why do you torment me by making me relive all these awful moments? I know I failed all of you. Do you not think I don’t? I live with those failures every day!”

Helen's stare didn’t change. Her eyes grew depthless the longer Harry looked into them. In her stillness, she seemed to become more surreal, less like the sister Harry remembered and more like an unknown entity he was beginning to fear.

 

______________

 

“Hey...so...Happy Christmas, Harry.”

Harry looked up, disoriented to find himself in Kingsman’s medical ward. The lights were bright and clinical, the air just slightly antiseptic. Only the faint beeping and thrum of machines played a soft score to the otherwise sedate setting, which went far in soothing the frayed edges of his composure.

The time leaps now slipped by without his notice, it would seem. A quick glance at the nearest screen bore the date of 25.12.2014 in the lower corner. Two Christmases ago then, his first Christmas stint in hospital (and how sad was it that there had been two consecutive ones), when he was—

“I dunno if you’re in there or not, but if you are, I’m gonna keep you company, alright?”

Eggsy’s hair was growing out from the closely cropped style he had sported when Harry had met him for the second time in his life, and was currently at that awkward in-between stage where it would soon start needing to be retrained. It had been darker when shorter, but increasing length now revealed warm, tawny highlights. His posture was better, Harry noted with satisfaction, more upright and expansive, more confident of his place in the world.

He looked a far sight better than the pale comatose man who was in dire need of serious grooming, anyway.

“And if I’m annoying you, just tell me to fuck off, alright? That’s all you gotta do. Til then, I’ll take your silence as complicity.” That said, Eggsy proceeded to place a pair of reindeer antlers on his comatose self’s head.

“You little shit,” Harry muttered, unable to help but smile softly.

“If I had my mobile with me right now, Harry…maybe next time.” Eggsy grinned before settling back down in the chair by Harry’s bed and pulling out a slim book. Judging by the colourful illustrations and oversized font, it was geared more towards a younger audience, and Harry wasn’t sure if he ought to find that insulting.

“Was gonna send this to Dais, but I lost track of time. Kinda makes me a shite brother, but I’ll make it up to her when I get the job, yeah? She’s too young for this now anyway, so, I’m gonna practise a bit on a more willing audience. Without further ado:

> _‘Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house—_  
> 

"Well, I guess it’d have been better if I read this to you last night, but visiting hours was over, so you’ll have to settle for today. Anyways….

> _Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse—_

"You’d think them folks wouldn’t be having mice problems, what with living in a nice house with a lawn and all….”

As with all things, once Eggsy lost his self-consciousness, he became a study in effortless grace. His voice fell into a soothing rhythm of notes, and even his rough accent held a sense of theatricality, as if he were performing the old, familiar poem to his enraptured little sister and not to a man who couldn’t have discerned if Eggsy were reading aloud from one of Merlin’s expense reports.

For once, Harry found himself not minding his predicament, even though his heart still felt heavy in his chest when he looked at Eggsy as he had once been, the recruit whose training Harry had hardly been present for, another person he’d end up failing several times over in the months to come. It had been a lonely Christmas for them both that year, Harry realised, but at least he had been blissfully unaware of it, antlers and all.

Harry could at least be there for Eggsy now, even if the boy could never know it.

Though he hadn’t felt the usual reminders of his cumbersome, half-broken body since this whole hellish journey began, Eggsy’s voice was proving to be a soporific. Harry became aware he had been awake for several decades and looked down enviously at the undisturbed sleep his counterpart was getting until he finally gave in and went to sit on the edge of the bed. It was disconcerting to be seated next to himself and feel the heat his body gave off so that he could not simply pretend he was looking at some incredibly lifelike doll.

_You’re so old and ugly. Not at all like the bright young thing who always waits for you._

The mattress shifted and Harry glanced up to see Helen clambering up the bed across his prone body, coming to rest her head on his steadily rising and falling chest while meeting the eyes of her brother (the slightly older version) and smiling, causing him to reflexively smile in return. She stretched out her hand towards him in wordless supplication. He took it and held their hands over himself, taking comfort in the way his heart still beat steadily on, the way Eggsy continued his soothing recitation. If he had to be trapped in a terrible Christmas from his past forever, perhaps this one wasn’t so bad.


	3. The Present

“You know, of all the questions in this world I never thought would get answered, it certainly wasn’t, _'Does Harry Hart sleep in the nude?'_ ”

Harry awoke to the echo of a double chime ringing in his ears. His head still felt muzzy, his body not exactly in pain so much as heavy with bone-weary exhaustion, the weight of the past still pressing upon him. There was someone next to him in the bed, warm enough to be alive and tense enough to be awake. He dreaded turning his head to find out who, though, because it was a voice he _did_ recognise, much to his chagrin.

James Spencer stared at him shamelessly, bright eyed, flush with vitality and debonair in a three-piece bespoke suit.

Harry frowned, unsure if it was just his eyesight or his unravelling mind or, most likely, both. “You wondered about that?” was all he could think to ask.

James glance took on a wry cant. “As it would happen, the answer turns out to be no, because you’re secretly a prude. Pyjamas, Harry, really?”

He did his best to level James with a flat look. “I don’t see anyone here I need to impress.”

“You wound me.”

“James, why are you in my bed?”

“Just wanted to see what the much ballyhooed big deal was.” James smirked, which always made him look unbearably smug, and smoothly rolled onto his feet in a slinking, seamless movement that reminded Harry of a big, lazy cat. His suit wasn’t even the slightest bit wrinkled, a detail which annoyed Harry to no end. “So far, I’m underwhelmed. You didn’t even cook me breakfast.”

With some effort, Harry sat up, automatically slipping on his glasses and checking the time. The clock on his nightstand flipped from 2:00 to 2:01. He’d only been asleep an _hour_ , dreaming the dreams of the mad. But one glance at the apparently alive, un-bisected former Lancelot would have Harry amending that to _still dreaming_. “Where did Helen go?” Nevermind the fact that even if Helen’s appearance had actually occurred, by all rights, James still shouldn’t know who Helen was, for Harry never spoke much of his family to the point where most people thought he never had any at all.

“That adorable little cherub who accompanied you on your trip down memory lane?” James quirked a brow. “I’m afraid her work has come to an end, the past has been safely relegated to the annals of history once more and we have arrived at a new chapter in the story. The one where I make my dashing entrance.”

“I can understand Helen, but for the life of me, I can’t understand why they sent you,” Harry sourly remarked.

“I’m charming and delightful, two characteristics which are sorely lacking in your present,” James replied, not missing a beat. “Care to see?”

Harry groaned and fell back into bed, throwing the covers over his head. “No. I’ve had it with Christmas. I’m well and truly done.”

Only to have the covers rudely torn away, exposing him to the chilly air of his bedroom. Harry glared at James, who remained, as ever, unapologetic. “I’m afraid this one isn’t optional, old chap. The clock, as they say, is ticking. We’ve much to see and there’s only one day in which to see it.”

“One day?”

“Come on, Galahad. It’s Christmas!”

“It’s Arthur now, you insufferable prick—” Before Harry could further object, James had a grip on his arm and was pulling him handily out of bed with not much effort at all. James had been a match for Harry in height, with a body that naturally lent itself to a fair bit more musculature where Harry always had to work rather absurdly hard to break out of his slender frame. Now James seemed all too happy to wield this fact of biology over Harry as he indignantly manhandled him.

A grappling match of sorts ensued, but Harry was hardly at his fighting best and James had the power of the supernatural (or dream logic) on his side. With one last wrangle, James leveraged Harry’s momentum against him and pivoted, practically throwing him to the floor.

Except, when Harry expected to collide with the floorboards, he found himself with a face full of cold, bracing snow.

Harry looked up to discover he was _outside_ and it had apparently snowed overnight. There was a fresh, clean bed of white settled over the lane, and judging from the way the cobble paths were largely undisturbed, it was still very early morning.

“Looks like we’ll be having a white Christmas after all,” James said, his brogues coming to a stop by Harry’s head. James had made a point of wearing them exclusively to annoy him.

Harry was childishly tempted to grab James by his ankle and yank him down with him, but knowing his luck, he’d only succeed in getting accidentally (or not so accidentally) kicked in the face. Grateful that his limbs decided to mostly cooperate, he gathered the last threads of his pride and struggled to his feet.

It was easy to forget how beautiful London could be, especially on the miserable rainy days, which were frequent enough to be deemed standard, or when its people were especially disdainful, but London on early Christmas morning was as picturesque as a scene trapped in a snowglobe: a quiet, ancient sleeping beast who had yet to awaken, frost lacing its sides and snow glazing all its crooked edges. It stole away any acerbic comment Harry could think to voice.

“Why _is_ the image of freshly fallen snow so appealing?” James wondered aloud.

“Because it makes the world seem like it’s still full of possibility,” Harry said without thinking about it. He could feel James's scrutiny, but didn’t dare turn to meet his eyes as he started forward, oddly eager to see more of the city beyond. He couldn’t actually remember the last time he had been out in London on Christmas. He was usually out on assignment or, on those very rare occasions (the last being 1997), utterly shit-faced beneath his dining room table.

As if with each step, minutes could have soared by, time behaved so whimsically in his mad dreams, and when Harry finally emerged from the mews, London had already begun to wake up. Bundled up children streamed out from their homes, taking delight in kicking up the snow on the ground. Less enthusiastic adults trailed after them, preparing to shovel the pavement and sweep the doorways. Others were already eagerly on the move, so fast Harry moved nimbly to avoid them out of habit even if he was unsure it would even have mattered, heading out to pay visits to the homes of friends and family in anticipation of the hours ahead, and never failing to wish each other a very polite but no less heartfelt _Happy Christmas_ should their gazes accidentally meet in passing.

The thing was, they all seemed very merry, it was a near tangible quality. Their steps were light, their eyes eager. Whatever burdens of the world they may have born in the other 364 days of the year were tabled for at least one day. Quite possibly the happiest London could ever collectively hope to be.

“Not so bad, is it?” James spoke up from behind him, giving Harry a moment of fright. Bloody bastard. “But we should see what our friends are up to, I think.”

“I’d really rather not.”

“Why are you so allergic to fun, Harry?” Which caused Harry to scowl in reply. “After all, you’ve done your best to make everyone’s lives as miserable as yours this past year, but there too you’ll find some surprising resilience.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Harry sighed, resigned to James’s antics.

“Then let me teach you a lesson,” James grinned and snapped his fingers before Harry could call him out on stealing his bloody lines.

 

______________

 

The picturesque scenery abruptly became the bowels of the Kingsman estate in the blink of an eye, which was enough to throw Harry off balance yet again. He immediately recognised the Tech department with its windowless walls covered in large screen monitors and its rows of stations being manned by a skeletal but sizable staff today.

But more importantly, the department had been quite transformed. Garlands of red and green paper rings had been looped around the monitors. Fairy lights strung up. Someone had even brought in a miniature artificial tree, under which were many colourfully wrapped gifts (most were tellingly bottle shaped). Someone had queued up a Christmas-themed playlist that trilled softly through the speakers. All in all, a very cheery setting, and completely in defiance of his earlier orders.

Most of the group had assembled towards the centre of the room in a loose circle, crowned in paper hats and breaking Christmas crackers open with each other. Harry even spotted a few open bottles of champagne. 

“When the cranky cat’s away, the mice will play,” James said helpfully.

“So I see.” But Harry couldn’t find it within himself to be annoyed. He could hardly blame anyone for not wanting to work a holiday, but he’d been taking it for granted how dedicated Kingsman’s support staff were at their jobs, going in early (or staying on very late) without complaint even while valiantly trying to claim back some of their own. There were smiles all around, even as some handlers were still at their posts, clearly talking to the few unfortunate agents who were currently on assignment.

He thought about the careless order he’d given Merlin to have several of them sacked and felt a deep sense of shame.

In the far back corner, a smaller subset of techs had gathered for what appeared to be a game of Celebrity Heads, square pieces of paper stuck to their shiny, youthful foreheads. Much to his bemusement, Iseult bore the name _HARRY HART_ on his and was already well into his turn.

“Am I considered famous?” Iseult said. He looked so painfully young and earnest, Harry hadn’t been sure if the boy could drink much less spearhead research into the next generation of smart explosives.

“Infamous in a certain circle, maybe,” said Nimue who enjoyed being clever and had big dark eyes that always regarded everyone as if she could read their souls. Merlin was terribly fond of her to the point where Harry had once jokingly asked if they were going to have a problem with Ector, Nimue’s husband.

“A tyrant? A dictator? Someone monstrous?”

“Frankenstein’s rather fitting,” someone muttered, causing Harry to glare in his direction. Someone he didn’t recognise, which meant someone low enough down on the ladder that Harry hadn’t had to personally approve his hiring – a no-code, as they were wont to be nicknamed. Not particularly nice, but Harry took vicious satisfaction in it now.

“One could make a considerable argument for it,” Nimue said evenly, glaring at the impudent tech in question, which was more than enough to make the boy fidget uncomfortably. “But officially, no.”

“What am I famous for then?” Iseult asked.

“Wearing the hell out of a suit,” said Nimue, to much laughter. Harry felt his cheeks heat up in embarrassment.

“Consuming enough booze to poison an elephant while still appearing to maintain complete sobriety,” said another no-code.

“Ooh, an agent is it? Alright,” Iseult grinned. “What do I specialise in?”

“Having more lives than a cat.”

“And being a bitter pisspot like one too,” another added, setting the whole group off into amused chuckling once more, though Harry didn’t find quite so much humour in that one.

“Am I well liked?”

“No, and yes.” Nimue smiled.

“That’s not an answer at all,” Iseult complained. “Young or old?”

“Relatively young.” Which was magnanimous. “Until you become terribly old.” Which was not.

“Never you mind with your attempts to muddy the waters. It’s obvious now: an aging drunken Frankenstein tyrant in a suit who works at Kingsman and hasn’t been killed, though not for lack of trying? Why, it can’t be anyone but our very own esteemed Arthur!” Iseult declared triumphantly to much cheering, which stung more than Harry would like to admit, even if he was under no illusions as to his popularity these days.

“To be fair, that seems to be in the position’s job description, if we look back on our past Arthurs,” said Nimue. “I think the spite preserves them well.”

“I am _nothing_ like Chester,” Harry said indignantly, feeling somewhat betrayed when Nimue had been more fair minded to him than most.

“You’re far more handsome, even with the whole missing eye bit,” James said consolingly, patting Harry’s shoulder despite the venomous glare it incited.

“But he wasn’t always this way,” Iseult said, peeling off the paper from his forehead and staring down at the moniker. 

“No, he wasn’t,” Nimue agreed.

“What changed, do you think?”

Nimue’s lips pursed in thought, and after a few beats she finally said, “I think he hates himself now.”

“Come on,” James said to Harry, his hand becoming more insistent in guiding Harry away from that increasingly unbearable conversation.

A bitter, sinking feeling had taken up residence in his chest, made all the worse by how nice the day had begun. _Just like every Christmas_ , Harry thought. He didn’t know why he expected this one to be any different. “Must we continue to do this? I think I hardly need a reminder of how the cheerful masses are celebrating in my absence.”

“You do so like to miss the point entirely, don’t you?”

“Then what is the point, James?” Harry stopped and turned to the man in question, refusing to move a step further. “No, I don’t enjoy Christmas. I never have and I never will, so shoot me for it or do something other than subject me to this inane cycle!”

Harry was breathing hard, his pulse elevated. Blood rushed in his head. The last of his shouting still echoing in his ears.

Many had grown to fear his wrath in the past few months. _Brain trauma_ , they whispered behind his back when they thought he could not hear them. _Causes personality changes. Mood swings._ It only infuriated him more, how he went from a respected and capable agent to the subject of gossip, patronised and coddled because he was apparently too damaged now to even function like a civilised human being. He could feel it inside himself, the unbridled rage taking hold, pushing cutting words out of his mouth, causing the blood to run hot in his veins.

Yet, somehow, he was apparently still fit to lead a significantly diminished spy agency, even when he was a ticking time bomb waiting to deal it and all the lives who depended on it a further blow.

Nimue was quite perceptive.

The song playing over the speakers ended and soon the inevitably soppy _Last Christmas_ came on. The unexpected pop of another champagne bottle being opened produced a surprised yelp from some corner, followed by ensuing laughter.

“Now you’re getting it, old chap,” James said, giving Harry a knowing look before taking one last glance around the room and sighing nostalgically. “I’ll miss this place, but there’s nothing for it, I suppose.”

“James,” Harry started, narrowing his eyes at the other man. Something was changing about him, though it wasn’t readily apparent at first glance. It was his colour, Harry realised, which could only be described as greyer. The bright, mischievous glint in his eyes was fading, leaving them rather dull.

“Nevermind that,” James brushed off, and just like that, he was the smooth, unruffled Lancelot once more. “There’s something else I want you to see. I think you’ll like it.”

 

______________

 

Harry most certainly didn’t like it. Spying on Eggsy in his own home with his family felt far too much like a breach of privacy. More importantly, he felt as if he hadn’t earned the right to that sort of familiarity, not in the way Eggsy looked so relaxed out of his suit, the way he smiled brightly and easily with his friends and family, the way love shone so transparently on his face.

The decorations Harry had ordered Eggsy and Roxy to remove from Kingsman’s grounds had suspiciously migrated to the Unwin household to a point that surpassed _enthusiastic_ and became well-traversed in the realm of _overwhelming_. The poor spruce, which had stood proud and gallant beneath the estate’s vaulted ceilings, was now sharply bent over like an old hunchback, drooping towards the floor. Its topper had been hastily secured with what appeared to be gaffer’s tape.

“Eggsy, be a love and help set the table, yeah?” Michelle called out from the kitchen, drawing Eggsy from where he was sat with his sister on the floor, helping her to build a precarious tower of blocks. “Don’t know where we’re gonna put all them plants. Why’d you have to get so many?”

She was right. The poinsettias crowded out the dining table, coffee table, sideboard, end tables and even the table in the foyer. There was a row of them on the floor beneath the picture window, lined up like soldiers.

“We can help too,” Roxy said, pushing a disgruntled JB off her lap and starting to get up, but Eggsy waved her off.

“Absolutely not. You’re the guest here, Rox. But if you wouldn’t mind watching Dais for a tick, I’d be grateful.”

“Not a problem at all,” Roxy said, turning to Daisy with a big smile and sinking down to the floor, “Hullo, Ms Daisy! Come see your Aunt Roxy!”

“You know this is why Mum is constantly on about you giving her grandchildren,” Alastair says after a few moments of watching Roxy interact with the little girl, chin resting in his hand to complete the portrait of casually elegant repose.

“That’s because Uncle Alastair couldn’t have been bothered to have a few himself first,” Roxy says to Daisy, still mimicking an upbeat tone and exaggerated smile that made Daisy grin back at her.

“He had a child, if you do recall,” Merlin said dryly, and unfortunately thoughtlessly as he belatedly realised the tension he’d unwittingly introduced to the room. It wasn’t often that Merlin misstepped, and Harry would have relished the rare gaffe had the subject not been so serious.

“Did he?” James asked in the beat of pregnant silence. “Since when?”

Harry refrained from rolling his eyes, more interested in Alastair’s reaction— _too soon_ , maybe—but Alastair merely, if perhaps too carefully, made a show of glancing towards the ceiling in a show of begging for serenity and said, “It was enough to satisfy all parental urges for several lifetimes, I can assure you.”

There was practically a great collective sigh of relief, though the smiles were just a touch dimmer in remembrance. Merlin wordlessly clasped Alastair’s shoulder in both comfort and apology.

“Oh, he means me,” James said, relaxing and then tensing a moment later as if he were thinking about taking offence. 

“How you were an agent for seventeen years, I’ll never know.” Crisis averted, Harry made his way into the kitchen where Michelle was stirring something on the cooker while Eggsy was perched on the tips of his toes, stretching for the wine glasses on the top shelf.

“Your work friends seem nice, babe,” Michelle said in an opening salvo, causing Eggsy to eye her warily. “Hard to believe they work for that awful man.”

“Mum….” Eggsy sighed, having clearly suffered through a version of this argument before, and many times over, from all appearances. “For the last time, I’m telling you, he’s not—”

“He makes you work at all sorts of strange hours, babe! What kind of man makes you work on Boxing Day? Can’t be _that_ much need for a tailor the day after Christmas! Don’t even get me started about the last two years, when I didn’t even know where you were.”

“Last year the world was still a shit show and you know it!” Eggsy shouted back, then pinched the bridge of his nose and visibly tried to calm down. “Look, we always got someone on call now that things is better, right? And this year, I drew the short straw. It won’t happen every time, I...I like my job. I’m good at it, and if it weren’t for Harry, we wouldn’t have any of this.”

“If it weren’t for that Harry, your father–”

The last glass was slammed down upon the counter just a touch too hard. “Mum, stop. That ain’t what happened and you know it.”

“I just don’t like the way he treats you. He takes advantage, Eggsy, and you’ve got too many stars in your eyes for to see it. He tells you a fairytale about your father, gives us a nice house and money to buy nice things, but I’m not stupid. I notice when someone’s hurting my boy.”

“Yeah, you’ve seen enough of it to know, innit?” Eggsy snapped, causing Michelle to flinch. “Don’t mean you did nothing about it, so why start now?”

Harry could see how Eggsy regretted the words as soon as they left his mouth, and in that moment, he could deeply sympathise with Michelle. When loosed, Eggsy’s anger lashed out fast and with unerring accuracy, all the more cutting because it was so often born from his own deeply buried wounds.

“Mum, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.”

“I think you should bring them plates out now, Eggsy,” Michelle said, keeping her back firmly to her son, shoulders tensed and spine stiff.

Harry observed the familiar play of emotions flicker across Eggsy’s face: frustration and anger – all self-directed – until they finally resolved into weary resignation: try as he might, he would continue to disappoint those he cared about.

“Did I do this to you?” he asked. It was his initial mistake that was the cause of so much strife in Eggsy’s life. It was his continued presence that was the cause of so much strife between the boy and his mother.

But Eggsy was always more hopeful than he had ever been, or perhaps he was simply stronger than Harry could ever hope to be. Harry witnessed Eggsy’s jaw firm in determination, the way his body settled into immovability, ready to stand his ground. “Harry didn’t kill Dad, Mum,” he insisted. “He ain’t Dean neither. Yeah, he can be a wanker. A right posh prick too. He’s had a rough go of it lately but I know that ain’t an excuse for the way he is sometimes. But he ain’t a bad man. I’ve seen bad men. He’s...he’s the very best of men.”

There was an intriguing blush staining Eggsy’s cheeks that made Harry’s heart speed up. He could feel his own face flush with embarrassment, but he wouldn’t trade the blooming warmth in his chest for anything.

Without waiting for a response, Eggsy grabbed the nearest stack of plates and exited the kitchen, and Harry was helpless to follow. He watched as Eggsy deposited the them on the dining room table, but instead of working on the place settings, Eggsy continued moving down the hall to the back door.

It was shockingly cold outside after the suffuse heat of indoors, and as soon as Eggsy stepped out into the back garden, he sucked in a sharp, breath and huddled in on himself with a shudder, pulling the sleeves of his hoodie over his hands.

“It’s freezing. You should go back inside. You’re not even wearing a coat,” Harry said, unable to help himself. Even he could feel the bitter chill through the thin material of his pyjamas and dressing gown, though the sensation was more a clinical observation than debilitating like this.

Eggsy pulled out his mobile with a shaky hand, clumsily sorting through his contacts while trying to expose as little of his skin to the elements as possible and, contact successfully retrieved, he pressed the mobile to his ear.

In the quiet of the evening, Harry could hear the continuous ring of the dial tone that Eggsy stubbornly soldiered through with chattering teeth and shivering breaths. He watched in rapt fascination as Eggsy’s nose began to turn red, but his attention surfaced sharply with the tinny echoes of his own voice.

_You’ve reached Harry Hart. I am currently indisposed, but if you would leave your name, contact information and purpose of your call, I shall endeavour to return it as soon as I am able. Thank you._

Had he always sounded so stuffy?

“Hey Harry, I was just calling to...” Eggsy began in his usual jaunty tone, but then seemed to hesitate, mouth open but nothing pouring forth for several moments until he swallowed and rallied for a second halting attempt, “...to see how you were, I guess. And maybe wish you a Happy Christmas? I hope wherever you are, you’re...happy.” Eggsy winced, then shook his head in disgust. “Cause, I mean you don’t seem like you really like Christmas. I mean...” Another wince, this time followed by the clenching of that magnificent jaw. “Forget that. I don’t know what I’m saying. No, what I’m saying is I...I care about you, Harry. And no one should be alone on Christmas, so I could come over and we could...sing some fucking showtunes, because I’m a fucking idiot.”

Eggsy sighed and viciously stabbed a button on his phone, producing a bland, _Your message has been deleted. To record a message, please press one. To hear more options—_ before Eggsy hung up entirely, content to press the hard edge of the device against his forehead.

“I should tell you something sensible,” Harry whispered in the scant space between them, and when had he gotten so close? He would never have dared in waking reality. “I’m not worth this. Or that I don’t deserve you. Your mother’s right, Eggsy. I should have stayed far, far away from you.”

 _In for a penny_ , Harry thought and reached out, touching the tips of his fingers to Eggsy’s temple, smoothing along his scarred eyebrow. His skin was warm, enviously smooth and supple, rougher with stubble as his fingers skirted down Eggsy’s cheek and cupped the hinge of his jaw. Eggsy did not give any indication he could feel Harry in return, didn’t lean into Harry’s palm or let Harry bask in one of his disarming naked expressions that seemed to reveal the whole of his feelings in a glance. Didn’t react at all save to blow out his next breath in a huff and glare at something Harry couldn’t see.

“But I fear I’m far too selfish for that.”

 

______________

 

It was an odd, makeshift sort of family that gathered around the dinner table, with ties that were rooted less in blood and class so much as the shared experience of having loved and lost and carried on regardless. Maybe all the more closer for it. Merlin sat at one end, Michelle at the other, and between them lay a feast of Christmas staples in an abundance Harry suspected the Unwins had never known before. It was the Christmas dinner they should have had nearly 19 years ago.

Harry felt more than a little awkward lurking at the edges of such a cosy, domestic scene like some impending slasher film killer ready to descend. The conversation at the table had, thankfully, veered far away from the subject of himself.

Eggsy and Roxy were regaling Michelle with a loosely translated tale of their mission to Italy earlier that autumn that had ended up as a comedy of errors, saved from becoming a complete disaster only by Eggsy’s unconventional thinking and Roxy’s thorough competence. If there were any lingering tension between mother and son, neither were willing to air their dirty laundry in front of the others as Eggsy freely smiled and joked and Michelle laughed until tears made her mascara run.

James had gone uncharacteristically quiet, hovering just over Daisy’s high chair. By now, his skin was leeched of all colour, and the sheer presence of him, which had once been larger than life itself to the point where it often overflowed into others', was now barely more than a whisper, fading by the second.

The fainter James grew, the more anxious Harry became, until the dread started to overshadow the warmth of witnessing the Unwin’s Christmas. Somewhere, a clock was running out and its unstoppable march of time was drawing near.

“James,” Harry said, “What happens to you after this? Where will you go?”

“I suppose the place where we all end up eventually,” said James, who still had yet to move his attention away from the table, or more accurately, one person in particular.

“Do you wish this day would never end? You could stay in this moment forever with…” Harry found himself only nodding towards the table. The thing between the previous Lancelot and Percival had always been an unspoken one out of necessity for social mores. No one and everyone knew, and it was too much a habit to put voice to it now.

“Such is the ephemeral nature of the present: you’re losing it even as you’re living it, and you’ll never have it again, not in the same way.” What was left of James, more apparition than man, had now completely centred himself on Alastair, moving around the table to stand next to him, even if he could only glimpse him now in profile. Even if the hand James raised to caress Alastair’s cheek did not seem to rest upon so much as sink through, having lost its corporeal qualities. “That’s what makes these moments the most precious things in the entire history of the universe.”

“James,” Harry said again, unable to keep the note of desperation from his voice. 

“Do me a favour, Harry. There’s something I’ve left in my office. Middle left desk drawer. False lining, of course. I doubt our dear Roxy has had the time to stumble upon it yet, but you’ll see that it goes to the right person, won’t you?”

Harry opened his mouth, wanting to say too many things. Apologies, pleas, more questions, or some horrifyingly sentimental words of fondness and regret, but eventually British reserve won out. “Yes. Yes, of course.”

“Thanks, old chap.” There was only the faintest outline of James now, and Harry had to squint to even make out the distinction at all. “I suppose this concludes my unfinished business. Christmas day is ending for you and I, though I fear, for you, there is more yet to come.”

“I’m ready for it.” He wasn’t. He never would be. To mask his apprehension, he turned back to the table instead. “They’ll be alright, you know. They’re strong, well loved and well looked after.”

He couldn’t see James’s face anymore, but somehow Harry knew the man was smiling anyhow. “I never doubted it for a second.”


	4. The Future

One, two, three.

Each chime seemed to stretch on into infinity, overlapping each other like waves lapping at the shores of Harry’s last nerve. But when he opened his eye, it was not to the expected sight of his innocuous bedroom ceiling, but a heavy downpour of sleet that had been unleashed on London, specifically upon where he stood on Savile Row in front of the Kingsman shop.

It wasn’t the cold weather he was feeling so much as the absence of warmth. No James, no Eggsy, and none of their light. Harry pressed a palm to his chest, just beneath his left collarbone. He felt the loss of it so keenly, he nearly thought he was having a heart attack.

After several more moments of waiting, he realised there would be no merry spirit coming to greet him this time, and so he climbed up the steps to the shop and peered in through the window. To the public, the store was, for all intents and purposes, closed and empty on Christmas day, though there were a few dim lights still illuminating the back stairwell that led to the shop’s dining room and administrative offices.

There was no reason for the doors to be unlocked, but to his surprise, the door yielded to Harry’s idle tug. He entered the stop cautiously, but when no one came rushing in with guns drawn at his arrival, Harry felt vaguely ridiculous for thinking of himself as breaking into the organisation he was in charge of, invisible or no.

Harry walked past the tables of fabrics, past the sales counter and up the stairs, rounding the corner as he had done so many times and pushing open the doors to the dining room with a flourish that came from muscle memory.

He didn’t know what he was expecting. An empty polished table, perhaps. There was no reason why any agent would be sat there today.

He never, not for a million years, expected to see Chester King again. At the head of the table, no less.

For a brief moment, Harry feared they had all made some kind of mistake, the poison Chester had unwittingly served himself had lost its potency and he had, much like Harry himself, begged a miracle, surviving his own certain death and simply biding his time in order to seize back control.

“Late again, Harry, even for your own funeral,” Chester greeted him with one disdainfully quirked brow, and Harry never wanted to commit unprovoked violence more upon another individual. Valentine may have been a madman who induced him into slaughtering a church full of civilians before putting a bullet in his head, but Chester had calculatingly betrayed his people and the very tenets of the organisation, knowingly allowed Harry to walk into a deathtrap and nearly succeeded in murdering his candidate when Eggsy’s loyalty proved greater than his.

The hatred was personal.

“I’d have taken the Grim Reaper over you,” Harry said, just short of snarling.

“It’s not death you fear,” said Chester.

“It’s not you either.”

“No, it’s not,” Chester easily concurred, catching Harry wrong footed. “But you do fear turning into me.”

Harry blinked.

Chester’s eyes gleamed, sensing blood in the water. “Did you think you would do things better? Clean up shop, be a ruler with both might and a heart of gold? How heavy does the crown sit now, Arthur?”

He was finally galvanised to move further into the room, approaching Chester as he would a target he’d been sent to kill, fists clenched at his sides. “You betrayed Kingsman and almost brought us to the brink of ruin, and for what? On the insane notions of some evil genius whose honest-to-god solution for climate change was to kill off most of the world’s population?”

Chester’s betrayal had done so much more damage than simply to their coffers and to those he had managed to turn with him (and who had subsequently lost their heads when their chips were set off). Trust, arguably the most important currency within their organisation, had been irreparably broken.

And the man sat before him remained impassive to the bitter-tinged accusations laid at his feet, or he did until Harry finally drew close enough to see the the utter _weariness_ in Chester’s gaze, how so very worn down he seemed now—a far cry from the venerable Kay he had been for nearly four decades of his career before ascending to the throne. “Do you think these decisions are made lightly? They never are, and you, of all people, should know that by now.”

“I won’t become you.”

“Do you think I was like this when I first took the position?” Chester scoffed. “I was very much like you once. Strong ideals and ambitions about the way I would run things. Kingsman was a mighty and venerable institution, but it could do so much more. Sound familiar?”

And, god help him, it did. Harry sunk into the chair at Chester’s right, barely cognisant of the fact that they had fallen into their old positions.

“I was going to be better than the last Arthur, of course,” Chester mused. “But then comes reality...and the compromises. You focus on one step at a time until one day, you look up from the dirt and see how far from the straight and narrow path you’ve strayed. It took me some time, but I finally realised Kingsman is not meant to save the world. At best, it can only maintain a precarious stalemate.”

“So you thought to clear the pieces off the board entirely and begin again?” Harry sneered.

“Our founding fathers envisioned a world of peace, but as it turns out, the only way to achieve that dream would be to rid it of mankind. One could say my actions were more honest to Kingsman’s true goals than anyone else’s who sits at this table.”

“Our founding fathers also believed in the sanctity of human life.”

Chester shifted, turning just little more towards him, speaking conspiratorially now. “Tell me, Harry, is that what you always keep in mind when you’re making the calls?” At Harry’s simmering silence, he continued, “No, of course not. You’d never get anything done otherwise. What you’re thinking about is how to get Kingsman back on its feet again. You’ve been planning on what needs to happen and how it can be accomplished. You’ve already started to take the initial steps to carry out those plans, streamlining operations, being more strategic in missions.”

“Only because you left me with no choice.”

“You mistake me. I’m not criticising your actions, I’m praising them. _Bravo_.” Though Chester’s version of praise never sounded very sincere. “You’ve made sound, logical decisions, and in the process, honed Kingsman into a precise blade rather than an emergency life vest.” Chester raised a hand to his glasses, tapping the rim in a gesture so familiar, Harry found himself reflexively starting to mimic him before forcefully stopping himself. “Each Arthur takes his direction from his forebear, and you should witness what comes next.”

And this, this is what Harry feared most. For it was one thing to relive a past that, while often painful, had obviously been survivable, or the present, over which he had no control, but the future was an impending judgement and indictment.

But Chester only watched him patiently, because the future loomed wide and infinite and he had all the time in the world, and Harry knew he could not put him, or any of this, off anymore. He brought his fingertips to his glasses as if to adjust them, but—

 

______________

 

“It is always a sad day for Kingsman when we lose one of our own, especially one so great,” Alastair said, pulling Harry from his efforts to regain his bearings to the newly coronated Arthur himself.

Time had not been so kind to Alastair. Recent loss had been too abundant, drawing longer and deeper lines across his face and several new veins of grey in his hair. His often neutral expression had hardened into something petrified and grim.

There were a few unfamiliar faces at the table: the woman sat directly across from him, and an unknown young male in Lamorak’s seat as well. Roxy was still alive and well, he was relieved to note.

“But Kingsman, as ever, lives on. To Kingsman!”

“To Kingsman!” The others intoned. No glasses of brandy in sight.

Harry frowned. “Well, I had hoped my send-off would have been a bit more personalised than that.”

“It was your suggestion to change it,” said Chester, causing Harry to flinch and turn in his seat. Chester stood just over his shoulder, gazing down at him at an angle perfectly suited to his condescension. “One entity, one purpose, all for one, sum greater than the individual parts rubbish.”

Whatever reply he would have given Chester was cut off by Alastair calling Merlin to the table. The rest of the knights had disappeared without his notice and the room was now empty save for its two participants (and two unseen visitors). Time was doing that funny thing it did here.

“I trust Gawain’s mission is set to conclude tonight,” said Alastair as Merlin approached.

“The bomb has been planted. Set to detonate in six hours.” Merlin’s expression didn’t waver, nor did his tone, but Harry had known the man long enough to recognise the signs of when his friend was deeply unhappy.

And of course, so did Alastair. “You don’t agree with this strategy.”

“I find the collateral damage to be unnecessary. It’s a civilian marketplace.” The horror of those implications made Harry sit back.

“And we’ve chosen a time when it will be the least populated to minimise casualties,” Alastair said, causing Harry to look at him askance. “But we’ve researched all possible angles to take and this one has been shown to be the cleanest and most effective method for devastating two large, well-funded terror organisations with the least amount of casualties and destruction in the long term.”

“Or the plan could backfire, and spark several splinter cells.”

“Who would still be blaming the other side and each other for the attack, thus still weakening the groups from within. The UN shall take care of the rest. We have limited buying power these days, Merlin. We have to spend our chips wisely.”

Merlin visibly swallowed, shaken. It was not an expression Harry was used to seeing on someone he usually associated with bedrock. “This isn’t who we used to be, Arthur. Even Harry—”

“This was one of Harry’s recommendations in case the situation escalated. Harry would have done this and worse, and you know it,” Alastair said, heat seeping into his normally cool, unaffected demeanour. “Let’s not pretend we’re besmirching his legacy now.”

“How could you—” Harry began, narrowing his eyes at Alastair.

“Then would Eggsy have—”

“Why don’t you ask him then?” Alastair said pointedly, glaring up at Merlin with sharp blue eyes that were capable of delivering the most chilling reproaches. “One could argue it was his failure to act that forced us to come to this.”

Merlin faltered, as if Alastair had delivered a physical slap. “You’re angry with him.”

“I’m angry with a lot of people, Merlin, but I’ve still a job to do, and so do you.” A dismissal if ever there was one.

“And a happy bloody Christmas to you too, Arthur,” Merlin said, his tone barely on the side of politeness as he turned sharply on his heel and left.

“I would never intentionally allow innocent civilians to die,” Harry viciously refuted, though the only one who listened didn’t appear to be taking him seriously.

“Maybe not right now, but it is a slippery slope,” Chester said. “With finite and dwindling resources, you’ve had to make sure your weapons were wielded where they could do the most damage. It’s become a favourite Kingsman tactic to set two rivals upon each other and sit back to pick up the pieces of what’s left. A very sound tactic, I must say, though civilians do often tend to be hardest hit. Oh, don’t look at me like that. No one makes these decisions because they want to, not even me. They make them because it’s necessary.”

The worst part was how deceptively _sensible_ Chester sounded, how Harry could already recognise the logic of his argument in his own modes of thought. How long had he been staring down the barrel of expense reports and budget allowances and a continuous stream of alarming world data and had to divorce himself emotionally simply to function and be the leader Kingsman needed? Lives became variables and there were acceptable parameters of loss if the end result was favourable to the bottom line.

But it wore on a man’s soul over a time. Harry could already see its effects on Alastair, had already started recognising himself less and less in the mirror.

Chester scrutinised him with a smirk as if he could clearly follow the path of Harry’s thoughts. “Let’s see how your little recommendation plays out, shall we?”

And that, for some reason, was what pushed Harry over the line. He shoved the chair back with enough force to topple it over, twisting in preparation to throw himself bodily at Chester, but when he turned, Chester was no longer—

 

______________

 

The air was suffocatingly hot and drab with brown dirt and desert shrubs as far as Harry could see. The sky was violet with impending sunrise, silhouetting the sloping mountains on the horizon. He began walking along the dusty road whose incline only steepened until he crested its hill and took in the stirring marketplace below. Trucks were slowly backing up into covered stalls. Colourful fruits and vegetables were being piled out upon tables, fires started up for roasting meats and cooking stews, vivid hand-sewn garments hung up and set to entice, and the anxious squawking of caged animals rose up as they awaited slaughter.

There weren’t many people out and about yet, which made the man in white who emerged from the sea of corrugated tin roofs particularly distinctive as he headed directly towards Harry. When he drew near, Harry could identify the white linen suit as bespoke, and the telltale thick-rimmed glasses. His features grew more familiar with proximity. Gawain.

“Package confirmed live, exiting now,” Gawain muttered without a glance in Harry’s direction before Harry watched him subtly tense at something behind him.

He too turned to see a woman balancing a bulging, heavy sack atop her head, shouting at a young girl who was running far ahead of her. Heading towards the market to sell and trade their wares. He felt sick.

 _Stay on mission, Gawain_ , the voice from Gawain’s glasses warned. His handler could probably see how Gawain focused on the mother and child, unable to look away as they came closer. _Do not break cover._

“Warn them,” Harry urged, trying to push past the barrier that separated them and _insist_ that Gawain listen to him. “Don’t let them walk into their deaths!”

_You know your orders, Gawain. Do not engage._

The woman met Gawain’s eyes warily, taking in his foreignness and hardened expression, before hurrying her child along. Gawain kept walking. They passed each other like two ships in the night.

“Turn around, you idiot! Don’t do this! Please don’t do this,” Harry pleaded, watching helplessly as Gawain only continued on down the road, shrinking into nothing more than a tiny white speck.

Harry turned back to the marketplace, desperate to do something, anything, but he had taken no more than two steps when the world exploded in fire.

 

______________

 

 _Ashes to Ashes_ rung out, clear and distinct, which meant it was blaring out from the sound system and not Harry’s record player, all delicate synthetic strings and Bowie’s chameleon voice echoing sentiments of wistfulness.

There was still a ringing in his ears, the noxious scent of tar still sharp his nose. He was so thoroughly rattled, wildly grasping for any anchor he could latch onto until the world normalised again. Bowie would do.

_I'm happy. Hope you're happy, too._

“Good god, I’m beginning to think I never knew Harry at all.” Roxy’s half-horrified, half-fascinated tone was accompanied by a face that adequately supported both feelings as she emerged into the dining room, Mr Pickle held out at arm’s length before her.

“I can’t deny he had...eccentricities,” Merlin admitted from where he was clearing the shelves of all the various knick knacks Harry had accrued among his travels and throwing them into a cardboard box with less care than Harry would have preferred.

“What are you going to do with that?” Harry demanded, watching Roxy like a hawk as she deposited Mr Pickle on top of heaping pile of books.

“There, King of the Mountain!” Roxy declared with a wide smile, and it was only then that Harry realised Roxy wasn’t entirely sober.

Nor was Merlin, judging by the impressive array of open and near to entirely empty decanters on the sideboard.

Merlin eyed the stuffed dog with a hint of disgust as he had always done whenever he laid eyes on it. Not because of the actual taxidermy, but for the sentimentality it represented. “Not sure we could pay someone to take that thing in.”

“I gifted it to you in my will, you know,” Harry said.

“I don’t know how Eggsy could stand it here,” Roxy sighed. Really, that was rather uncalled for. At Merlin’s (and Harry’s, though, he supposed, his didn’t count) look, she added, “I mean, aside from the questionable decor. Though very obviously that’s a part of it. I can’t tell if I’m in a natural history museum or a mausoleum−ooh, this is my favourite part!”

_I never done good things_  
_I never done bad things_  
_I never did anything out of the blue_

Roxy crooned along to the lyrics, lightly swaying, more uninhibited than Harry had ever seen her, but then, Lancelot always took special care in her airtight composure, too conditioned to always having to be twice as good as her male counterparts to get half as much.

Merlin didn’t appear particularly impressed. “I think you’ve dipped into the stores quite enough already.”

“A chance to raid Harry’s liquor stash was the only reason why I agreed to come here and help on bloody Christmas,” Roxy said. “Why you couldn’t have hired people to do this, I still don’t know.”

Why indeed. Kingsman had specialised staff for this sort of task when no other family members were available, though if he thought about it, Merlin and Eggsy were the closest thing to family he had. But why Merlin asked Roxy to help him when Eggsy would have benefited most by the process, if such a thing were to be believed, was another question entirely.

Merlin cleared his throat. “I thought you could do with some closure.”

“Closure,” Roxy snorted (echoing Harry’s sentiments, if not as elegantly) before helping herself to another drink while heavily leaning a hip against the furniture to keep her balance. “Like a good friend once said, _what a load of bollocks._ ”

And then Merlin did something Harry had only seen very rarely: he genuinely smiled. Not one of boundless happiness, nor very noticeable unless one looked closely, but there it was, a marvel.

But something wasn’t sitting right with Harry, a niggling detail he couldn’t put name to but remained a glaring presence all the same, like a question he forgot just as he was about to ask it.

“God, if Harry weren’t dead, I sometimes think I could kill him,” Roxy sighed into her glass, already half-drained, which was somewhat alarming. “I can’t help but think that all of this was his fault. Stupid, I know. We make our own choices, but in hindsight, I can trace a clear line back to the source.”

Merlin sighed and threw down a rag he had been using for dusting, running a broad palm down his face. His shoulders hunched over by habit. He looked older than even his fifty odd years. “He was never the same after Kentucky. A life-changing event for anyone, to be sure, but it always seemed more like Harry—my Harry—simply gave up. That was the thing about Harry Hart, every damn hill was worth dying on. Drove me up a bloody wall.”

“And that’s how all your hair fell out, as you like to remind me,” Harry said.

“And that’s how all my hair fell out,” Merlin said gifting them with a second soft smile in as many minutes that receded like morning fog. “I didn’t know how much I’d miss it until the day Harry woke up and just...fell into line.”

The heaviness of the thought seemed to push Merlin to generously refill his own glass, downing it in one swallow before pouring out another. “This work we do, Lancelot, sometimes makes us question ourselves. For being a complete pain in my arse, the Harry I knew before Kentucky was my Truth North. The Harry after...well. Towards the end, we saw less eye-to-eye on the missions Kingsman took. The work carried over into our friendship. It was all we could do to remain civil to each other at the office. We stopped talking in all other contexts. In retrospect, I wish I had spoken up more, but I just followed orders too.”

“I’m sorry, my friend,” Harry whispered, studying the way sadness had taken up residence in every dejected line of Merlin’s body, and worse still, knowing he had - would - be the cause of it. “I never wanted this happen. I was tired. I despaired. I didn’t feel like anything I had done made much of a difference, but this is...this is beyond the pale.”

“Kingsman’s become a place I don’t recognise anymore. Like I used to have a soul. Some days I feel more like a mercenary than an agent. And my brother...my brother is turning into him, and I don’t know how to stop it, Merlin. Eggsy’s always...Eggsy was….” Roxy’s voice wavered dangerously, her face crumpling under the assault of unexpected grief.

A cold, terrible feeling of foreboding washed over Harry. “No.”

“I think…a part of me knows he did it on purpose. I think it was him choosing his hill. I have to believe he knew what we were becoming and just...opted out. He was stronger than all of us, I don’t care what anyone else says.”

“ _No_ ,” Harry repeated, glaring at a now quietly weeping Roxy as if he could will her to shut up and take it all back or at least explain what the hell was going on. “What are you talking about? I’m the one who died. You’re packing up _my_ things. Where is Eggsy? Where is he?”

But he was obliviously brushed aside by Merlin, who had moved towards her and wordlessly wrapped his long arms around her petite frame in a rare moment of gentleness.

“Oh how remiss of me.”

Harry turned to see a falsely contrite Chester standing behind him.

“Did you think Kingsman had been toasting you?”

There were few moments in Harry’s life when he had felt completely helpless, ill with the realisation that the scales of his existence weighed more heavily in favour of _harm_. They were the moments when he felt so small, so thoroughly disgusted with himself, that had there been a loaded gun nearby, he would not have hesitated in removing himself from the equation entirely. The last time had been when he emerged from a church full of slaughtered bodies out into the Kentucky sun.

And then there was now.

“You died, yes,” Chester said. “A year ago. Alone, in your home, on Christmas. Alcohol poisoning, I believe. Rather an ignominious end for an Arthur, if I do say so myself. Your death came more as a relief to those who knew you. Well, except for the one. I daresay his grief more than made up for everyone else’s. Moved into your house, didn’t change a single thing.”

Not a mausoleum then. “A shrine,” Harry dully whispered.

“And all while Kingsman was hiring itself out for material and political gain, your boy began to, as they say, raise a few red flags. Arguing with the new leadership, barely following protocol, suspension after suspension after suspension. Provisional agent status. In short, living down to all my expectations.”

“Sounds like he was doing the right thing. I’m proud of him,” he said, always defiant to the last.

But it hardly mattered, because Chester knew he had won. “Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair,” he said, reaching out to clap a hand on Harry’s shoulder and—

 

______________

 

“Galahad, have you located the target?” Nimue asked, eyes rapt upon her screens.

At first, Harry’s heart fluttered in misguided hope, that Chester had merely delivered a cruel, unfunny joke at his expense, but no, this was….

The view from the monitors began to pan as they displayed Eggsy’s point of view, scanning the crowded party of what appeared to be Dubai’s remaining wealth and affluent who had gathered together in the Burj Al Arab’s Marina Garden against the backdrop of a stunningly beautiful sunset sinking into the Arabian Gulf. One could almost forgive the way the camera’s view kept wandering back to the panorama in admiration.

 _Negative_ , came Eggsy’s voice through the speakers.

The room was tense with anticipation, unusually full for what was normally just a mission between an agent and a solitary handler in a private room to guide them. But Merlin stood over Nimue’s shoulder at her left, and Alastair to her right, their faces grim.

“Need I remind you, Galahad, if we allow the UAE’s last living Emir to be assassinated, we lose everything we’ve been working towards in the past year,” Alastair said, earning a brief glare from Nimue over her shoulder that went unheeded.

Harry could tell she wasn’t pleased to have her two superiors hovering over her.

 _No, sir. You’ve adequately stressed the importance several times already_ , came Eggsy’s insolent reply.

In spite of it all, the dreaded thing that he knew was about to happen, Harry smiled. Even hollowed out by grief, Eggsy was still the boy tied to the subway tracks, spitting out his final invective in the face of impending death. But that was the issue, wasn’t it? Nobody could hurt Eggsy better than himself.

Except Harry.

He wished he could see Eggsy’s face, but the cameras that managed to cover the large space barely depicted Eggsy as a fuzzy figure casually moving through the crowd, mingling where appropriate as, it soon became clear, a wealthy English real estate developer would, glass-cutting accent as sharp as his suit.

 

______________

 

Eggsy had once admitted to him, many months after V-Day, that he still felt like an impostor most of the time. He could mimic the manners and accent and, most of all, the confidence, but he was still waiting for the moment someone would step in and drag him off for fraud.

“I know what you said. Being a gentleman ain’t about all that,” Eggsy said. “But maybe I still haven’t got there yet. You know, being better than who I was.”

Harry had still been in convalescence, still medicated out of his mind most of the time, with half his face swathed in heavy bandages, and tubes and wires connected to his body through any points of possible entry.

But Harry remembered that moment. He remembered clumsily reaching for Eggsy’s hand, and Eggsy instead reaching out to hold his when he couldn’t. “You’re there, my dear boy. You’re there.”

 

______________

 

“Galahad, two o’clock!” Nimue said. She never raised her voice, but there was a note of urgency threaded through it now.

The screens jerked right, and Harry saw the anomaly. A young boy not older than eight who could have been mistaken for a child of one of the guests were it not for his ragged oversized sweatshirt and empty eyes.

“Jesus,” Merlin muttered, paling.

“No radio transmission frequencies detected, no dead man’s switch, just normal manual trigger,” Nimue faithfully reported.

“Galahad, neutralise the target before he detonates that bomb!” Alastair hissed, more shaken than Harry had ever seen him.

On the monitors, Harry could see Eggsy move quickly towards the boy, drawing out his gun despite the waves of panic it incited through the crowd.

The boy’s eyes shifted to meet his, staring directly into the camera. Harry knew the look of someone who was resigned to his fate.

Eggsy’s hand trembled.

“Galahad, take the shot!”

At his side, the boy’s fist twitched, revealing a glimpse of the trigger.

“Eggsy…lad...” Merlin said.

It was a moment seemingly suspended in time. They were holding their breaths, frozen, as if one small move would break the spell. Nothing happened at first, and Harry thought, idiotically, hopelessly, stupidly: _Eggsy will talk him down._

 _I’m sorry. I can’t_ , Eggsy’s voice crackled over the speakers.

Harry felt his stomach drop and sank to his knees as events played out across the screens.

Eggsy broke out in full sprint towards the boy, colliding with him and propelling them both over the low marble barrier and into the sea below.

In Eggsy’s arms, the boy looked up at him in fear. His finger pressed down on the trigger.

There was a flash of brilliant white, a noise like a wave about to crash overhead, and the screens blanked out. Transmission lost.

The stunned silence dragged on.

“Stop this,” Harry whispered. “I want out of this now.”

His lungs began to constrict in his chest. It was hard to suck in oxygen, until it was impossible. His thoughts started skittering in panic, until the only thing he could think of, mindlessly, was escape. From somewhere. Anywhere but here.

Anything but this.

“Let me out! Get me out!” It came choking out of him, a torrent of words that turned into horrendous, ugly sobs too large to be contained. “Chester, I don’t want to be here anymore! Oh god. I don’t want to be here anymore. Please!

“Oh god, please...please….”


	5. And Now

When Harry awoke on his living room floor next to a damp patch of rug that smelled like scotch, it was quiet.

He was home. 

At first, he understandably wasn’t sure if he was really awake, but it _felt_ like he was this time. When he promptly tried to stand, he cursed as he nearly tripped over his unresponsive legs and the flood of sensation of a hundred needles prickling his skin. To say nothing of the godawful hangover that left his head stuffed with cotton, his mouth tasting like roadkill, his throat parched and his stomach ready to wring itself inside out. _Yes_ , this was most definitely reality.

But it was a good kind of reality, and Harry started laughing.

Albeit laughing and wincing in turns, euphoric with relief even though the rest of his body had much to protest over spending a night passed out on the hard floor.

His mobile had 5% life in it left, but it told him all it needed to: it was only half six on Christmas morning, not a few days or a few years into a dark future, and there was so much left to do.

 

______________

 

It was familiar, like a half remembered dream. The handcrafted paper-based decorations (Kingsman’s techs, while excellent at their jobs and individual specialties, were not, on the whole, especially talented artists, but what they lacked in skill they made up for in sheer enthusiasm), the small gathering and, most important of all, the genuinely felt cheerfulness.

Harry didn’t barge into the tech’s bullpen and call attention to himself as he usually would have done. Instead, he hovered along the edges of the room, quietly observing the merriment that swiftly turned into ribald singing once _Fairytale of New York_ blared through the speakers.

With as much stealth still left to him in having to rely upon his cane, he crept along the edges of the room until he could silently loom behind Iseult just as the younger man concluded his deductions.

“...very own esteemed Arthur!”

Harry took a moment to enjoy the array of horrified faces. Even Nimue’s composure had momentarily been shaken out of its usual cool reserve.

“Well, at least I can still wear the hell out of a suit,” he declared, laying a hand on Iseult’s shoulder just to temper the way the younger man jumped in surprise.

“A-Arthur….”

“Iseult. I see we’re all making the best of a working Christmas.”

“Er, yes.”

“Working hard, showing the proper respect to our superiors.”

The poor boy paled and probably would have collapsed were it not for Harry’s firm grip. “Uh….Sir. I didn’t mean–”

“I know I don’t say this enough, but it apparently falls on me to remind you of it now,” Harry said, giving the small group a flat look. In his periphery, he could see they were attracting more attention from the rest of the party. Some attempted to innocuously draw closer without outright gawking, others didn’t bother with discretion at all. Their faces registered a range of reactions from mild anxiety to fierce, sullen defiance.

“Kingsman is honoured to have such hard-working, dedicated individuals who do a lion’s share of the work and are content to receive very little of the glory. For that, I thank you. I know the last year and a half has been challenging. I know I have not faced them with half as much grace as you.”

He swallowed, voice growing unexpectedly thick as he recalled how Nimue's face had looked in that grim future he had wrought for her. For all of them.

“I can’t give you the holiday you deserve, but I can at least hope to ease a little of today’s burden.” And with that, the carts were rolled in, piled high with cartons upon cartons of takeaway from Harry’s preferred Chinese restaurant, to the surprised delight of the techs and handlers who swarmed the food like starved scavengers.

The celebrations became more boisterous after that, buoyed by greasy food, turned up music and a few more bottles cracked open. Harry found himself in conversations with people he had barely said more than two words to over the last 18 months. He was pleasantly surprised to discover that while they were, yes, _young_ , they were also enthusiastic, brilliant and so incredibly hopeful to make a real difference in the world that whatever worries he had possessed for the integrity of Kingsman’s future were fully laid to rest.

“Something’s changed about you,” Nimue said to him when she finally caught him alone, staring at him as if she had been presented with a completed puzzle depicting an entirely different image than what had been on the box.

“I do hope so,” Harry said, gazing at her steadily.

“Care to divulge, Arthur?”

And Harry replied with a perfectly straight face, “Last night, I was visited by three ghosts who gave me a full accounting of my life. I found it wanting.” 

Nimue’s brows rose in scepticism, looking just a bit put out. “Alright, keep your secrets.”

Harry smiled and pressed a grease-stained parchment bag into her hand. “Have an eggroll and enjoy your Christmas, Nimue.”

He had to admit it was more than a little bit satisfying to be able to get one over on her for once.

But he had also come to the estate for another purpose. Or rather, a promise.

He took his leave as circumspectly as his arrival had been, painstakingly making his way to the wing where the agents’ offices were located. As he walked down the long, light-filled corridors, the floor-to-ceiling windows revealed the picturesque acres of undisturbed white snow thickly coating the ground and frosting the abundant forests. A white Christmas indeed.

Harry had access to every room on the estate (though Merlin had and did wield the means to bar him from his own private offices, that Scottish bastard), so entering Roxy’s office was little more work than punching in his master code. Roxy’s office was as neat and organised as she was, though the shelves were mostly barren and there was a certain air of neglect that indicated its owner was not in here very often. The world was finally stabilising though, things would settle down soon enough.

Accessing the drawers of Roxy’s desk was a trickier affair. He had his picks, but not his dexterity, so it took more than a few clumsy minutes to finally pry open the desired drawer. Any spy worth her salt would notice the hash of score marks he had made on the lock, but he was counting on that being a few months away before Roxy had enough downtime to actually use said desk.

A pat to the bottom of the desk drawer and a careful scan of its edges with his fingers revealed nothing hidden, and the lack of discovery was almost unbearably disappointing. Harry sat back and frowned at the wood as if it had personally offended him.

He thought about James. Charming, overly extroverted, reckless James. James who presented a surface traditionalism that masked his often unconventional methods. As if guided by an invisible hand, he leaned forward and reached in and up to discover a much flimsier panel that supposedly composed the bottom of the upper drawer. It was easy to slide out, and once he did, something heavy and rectangular fell into his hand. Harry pulled it out to reveal a simple black journal with most of its page edges warped and uneven enough to evidence heavy use.

He’d have been lying if he said he wasn’t tempted to read its contents. He was a spy – he came by his curiosity instinctively. James, with his joviality and exuberance for living in the moment, had been cut from such a different cloth than the rest of them that an opportunity to glimpse into his mind would have been fascinating.

But Harry was also a gentleman, and whatever those pages contained had not been intended for him, so with the tenderness of an archivist handling an ancient document, he pressed the journal close to his side as he erased what minute disturbances he had inflicted upon Roxy’s office (save for the score marks) and set forth on the next point of his journey.

 

______________

 

“Alright, alright, hang on a minute! I’ve got your dosh—ah, Harry!” 

The look on Eggsy’s face when he opened his front door in expectation of being serenaded by a group of carolers ( _”I can’t believe those people still exist!”_ Eggsy had once exclaimed) was one Harry tried to memorise: a wordless story that began with bemused exasperation, climaxed with confusion and then ended on a note of quietly radiating pleasure.

“Hello, Eggsy. I apologise for disturbing this time with your family.”

“You ain’t disturbing anything. I didn’t think you was coming, I mean, I had hoped, but–”

“Oh.” Harry blinked. “I didn’t want to intrude any more than I have already. I just wanted to come by to…”

Eggsy gazed at him.

“To...wish you a Happy Christmas,” he concluded lamely. It sounded rather silly now that he was actually here.

“Come all this way to wish me a Happy Christmas and then be on your way?” Eggsy asked.

Actually, it sounded even sillier when Eggsy said it. “Something like that.” Because he couldn’t very well say, _I needed to see your face and know you were alive._

“Well, it would be very ungentlemanly of me to just send you away on Christmas. Come in, we’re almost ready to eat. Unless you got plans.”

“No. No other plans, but, Eggsy—”

“Well then don’t just stand out there. We’re letting out all the heat, come on.” 

Eggsy backed up and looked at him expectantly, which was how Harry ended up in the Unwin’s foyer with his coat nearly being torn off by an over-solicitous Eggsy, and turning just in time for a face to face encounter with a very surprised Michelle.

It was the first time she had laid eyes upon him in almost twenty years, Harry realised. He supposed he made for a gratifyingly sore looking sight.

“Ah. Hello, Mrs Unwin.”

“Mr Hart,” she said with all the warmth of a frozen pond, glancing at Eggsy with a look that demanded an explanation.

“I invited him for Christmas dinner, Mum. He weren’t sure he could make it ‘til just now though, but it’s not a problem, innit? We’ve got plenty of food and Christmas is all about spending time with people and making nice.” This last, Eggsy directed to her mother in a tone that could have been mistaken for naively cheerful if the Unwins weren’t conducting a prolonged silent battle of wills.

At long last, Michelle reluctantly turned back to him. Her smile was more a grimace, and she couldn’t quite meet his eyes, but she wasn’t slapping him or in tears, so Harry counted it as a win. “Of course, then. The more the merrier. Happy Christmas, Mr Hart.”

“Happy Christmas, Mrs Unwin.”

After a beat, Michelle’s tone relented, if only grudgingly. “It’s alright for you to call me Michelle.”

Which was more than he deserved, to be given that small ounce of familiarity for Eggsy’s sake after all the history between them. “Then please, call me Harry.”

It was a start, at least.

Having been cleared of his first hurdle, Harry was swiftly (or as swiftly as his mobility would allow for these days) ushered into the sitting room and a drink was put into his hand (Eggsy only giving him a brief questioning look when he requested sparkling water). As predicted, it was already populated by the likes of Merlin and Alastair and...a very small pug puppy, sitting at Merlin’s feet, shivering pathetically and gazing up at him sadly. From his bed in the corner, JB glared at the young furry intruder.

“Drying out, Harry?” Merlin held up his tumbler in greeting, because even on Christmas, he was a bastard.

“Seeking new companionship, Merlin?” Harry returned, taking a seat beside Alastair on the sofa.

“My Christmas present from Eggsy,” Merlin explained sourly, looking balefully down at the subject in question. “Should have known he was up to no good when all the puppy rejects from the Tristan round mysteriously went missing.”

“If Eggsy gave you a puppy over me, he must think you’re in very dire straits indeed,” said Alastair blandly, though Harry could see how he masked his smirk with a careful sip of scotch.

“Which reminds me,” Harry said before Merlin could reply with an undoubtedly scathing retort, “I happened to stumble across this in the end of year accounting and do believe it belongs to you.”

Between Kingsman and the Unwin’s home, he had managed to put James’s journal in a small paper bag to protect it from the elements should Harry’s unsteady feet fail him again. He had carried it with him inside and handed it to Alastair now without much fanfare.

Setting his glass aside, Alastair pulled out the journal with as much enthusiasm as one would have when opening their tax bill, but he froze when he realised what it was he was holding.

As the seconds slipped by and Harry started to wonder if it had been poor timing on his part, Alastair finally sighed and reverently traced the cover with his fingers. His gaze was no longer focused on the present. “You know, for a man who never learned how to shut up for more than five minutes at a time, he was always writing in this bloody thing. Refused to share it with anyone. Even me. He’d fill one up, and then he’d burn it so that no one could ever read it.” The wistfulness on Alastair’s face receded and was replaced by a droll look. “It was incredibly annoying.”

“I think he’d wouldn’t mind if you read this one,” Harry gently prompted.

“Just happened to stumble across it, did you?” Alastair arched a brow.

“Serendipitous, wouldn’t you say?”

“Quite.”

But the journal was still grasped tightly in his hands, heavy with anticipation, and Alastair couldn’t tear his gaze away from it for long. He touched a corner of the journal, parting its cover from its inside pages, and then paused, finally coming to a decision. Without a another word, he stood up and moved closer to the fireplace, crouching down and peeling back the grate. Taking one last long look at the journal in his hands, Harry heard a softly whispered, _Goodbye, my love,_ before he tossed it into the flames.

The three of them watched the edges of the book brown and curl up in the licks of flame, finally turning into grey ash and crumbling as it was fully consumed.

After a long bout of heavy silence, Alastair said, “I think I’m going to start dating again.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Merlin said sincerely, clasping Alastair’s shoulder when he retook his seat.

“It’s going to be bloody awful, but I think it’s time.” Alastair glanced at the puppy. “Provided you don’t have it killed and stuffed,” he said, ignoring Harry’s glare, “what will you name it?”

Merlin gave the puppy a considering glance. “Bawbag,” he said, deadpan, and took another sip of his drink.

Alastair only pursed his lips. “Huh.”

More silence ensued, but it was a comfortable one. The air was viscously warm and sleepy. Intermittent noises from the kitchen drifted into the room. An egg timer going off. Cupboards opening and closing. Harry could hear Roxy and Eggsy in some exuberant conversation with Daisy, the little girl’s shrill squeals piercing the distance easily.

“I think I’m going to restart therapy,” he finally confessed.

Merlin eyed him. “Physical or mental?”

“Both.”

“Huh,” Merlin said. Apparently it was his turn to be nonplussed.

“Good,” Alastair added more definitively. “I’m glad you’ve decided to stop being an idiot.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I never thought you one to throw in the towel like you’d done. Remember when I broke my spine ten years ago? You made sure my resignation letter disappeared before it ever came across Arthur’s desk and then had James wake me up at 4am every morning for rehabilitation. I was motivated to make a full recovery just so I would have the strength to murder the two of you and drag your bodies out into the forest to feed the animals.”

“And they say anger isn’t a healthy force,” Merlin said before turning contemplative. “Between what’s not in that glass, and now this, it appears you’re turning over a new leaf. What prompted all of this? Or should I be asking _who_?”

“While you may not be entirely wrong in your implication, that’s not the whole of it. Or even most of it. This,” Harry said, holding up his water and tapping at a few bubbles clinging to the sides of his glass, “is mostly for me.” 

“That’s disgustingly mentally sound,” Merlin finally remarked, but Harry could detect a hint of a pleased smile at the corners of his mouth.

“Perhaps this calls for a toast.” Alastair picked up his glass and held it up, and Merlin and Harry followed suit. The warm glow from the hearth seemed to caramelise the contents of their glasses to such an inviting colour, Harry felt a sharp longing sting the back of his tongue. The first of many, to be sure. “To new beginnings.”

“To new beginnings,” they echoed, and drank. Harry valiantly tried to tell himself sparkling water was just as satisfying as scotch. It wasn’t quite, but that was rather the point.

 

______________

 

Later, far later than he initially intended, when Harry was alone in his home, he abandoned his tie and jacket first, then followed it up by undoing the top buttons of his dress shirt. Full of good food and warmth from the company (by the end of the evening, even the cold war with Michelle had thawed into something approaching civility), it caught up with him with the force of a tidal wave: the immutable past, the ephemeral present, the unknowable future.

He became lightheaded, breathless and in dire need of a drink. Home and solitude, which he had always cherished, were suddenly like two heavy stones upon his chest.

Instead of frequenting the sideboard as was his habit, Harry concentrated on lighting a fire in the hearth to push back the darkness and, on impulse, queued up _Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas_ on the sound system with shaking hands. He distantly recalled it had been his mother’s favourite, back when there was still a Christmas to be had.

Willing Judy Garland’s dulcet tones to smooth over the last of his frayed nerves, he sank back into the wing back chair and closed his eyes. He was nearing the end of his body’s limits, he knew, but something kept pushing him to stretch the day out just a little bit further, because he half feared what he’d wake up to tomorrow.

_Once again as in olden days_  
_Happy golden days of yore_  
_Faithful friends who are near to us_  
_Will be dear to us once more_

That was until the doorbell abruptly brought him into alertness.

His first idiotic thought was that _carolers_ had come to his doorstep in spite of the lateness of the hour, but of course they hadn't.

Instead, it was Eggsy.

Harry blinked.

“Hi,” Eggsy said nervously.

“Hi,” he repeated dumbly, all intelligent speech having apparently fled him.

“Aren’t you gonna invite me in?”

Right. Manners. Harry stepped aside to let Eggsy into the house, his hands kept mysteriously behind his back, which he wouldn’t let Harry see.

“I’m sorry, did I forget something at your home?” Harry asked. “You didn’t have to come all this way to bring it back.”

“Nah, it wasn’t you. It was me who forgot something. I...it was nice. Having you around tonight. Did you enjoy yourself at least a little bit?”

Harry warmed. “Yes, Eggsy. I enjoyed myself very much. Thank you for inviting me.”

It was a wonder how a young man so brash and bold could still blush so prettily. “But we didn’t get much time alone earlier, yeah? And I forgot to give you your gift.”

“My gift?”

Eggsy presented him with a medium sized flat box wrapped haphazardly in an illustrated snowflake printed wrapping paper.

“Thank god it’s not a puppy.”

“Oi, that’s enough out of you. Merlin likes his gift no matter how much he denies it.”

“Of course,” Harry drolly said.

“Well, go on then, open it.”

Under Eggsy’s impishly sparkling eyes, Harry tore open the wrapping paper without particular care to reveal a cheap white cardboard box. The whole thing was incredibly light and made little sound. Curious, he peeled off the top cover.

Fuzzy reindeer antlers.

He couldn’t help it. He laughed.

And Eggsy laughed along with him, grinning like the little shit he was. Well, at least until Harry’s vision blurred and his laughter took on an hysterical edge.

“Shit. You alright?” Eggsy asked, concerned and somewhat taken aback.

It took a few more precious moments to reel himself back in, and by then, Eggsy appeared as if he was torn between ringing Merlin or the psychiatric ward. Wiping away the bothersome moisture in his eye, Harry cleared his throat and attempted decorum. “I apologise for my outburst. Thank you for these, by the way,” he said, holding up the box. It was supposed to have come out wry but instead emerged as rather stunningly sincere.

“If I knew you’d be this easy to shop for, I would’ve had more fun with it ages ago.” Eggsy still looked at him as if there were a distinct possibility he would crack up, but he was grinning too. “I know you’re not big on Christmas, but….”

But Eggsy would never stop trying, not for him. It was all over his face. It always had been. And Harry was an absolute idiot.

“Would you care for a nightcap?” he offered.

“Alright,” Eggsy easily agreed, trailing closely after him to the sideboard, a heated presence at his shoulder of which Harry was all too aware.

Macallan 30, neat. Just as Eggsy liked it on late nights to settle a long day. His hands only trembled once. But when he turned to hand Eggsy his glass without a second one to accompany it, Eggsy paused in the middle of taking it and frowned. “Nothing for you? I noticed you didn’t drink nothing at dinner either.”

“I wanted to be clear-minded for this.” They really were standing closer than was considered appropriate, even for two close friends, their fingertips touching each other over the glass they both still gripped. Harry concentrated on that rather than meeting Eggsy’s confused gaze as he tried to muster his courage.

“For what?” Eggsy asked, but when Harry finally looked at him, there wasn’t confusion, just a dark heat shimmering in his eyes.

It was enough hope for Harry to close the scant few centimetres that separated them and kiss him.

And he might as well have been kissing a statue for the way Eggsy remained completely unresponsive.

Harry pulled back, stomach sinking, the beginnings of horror rising up in his throat. He couldn’t read the expression on Eggsy’s face at all.

“I’m—I’m terribly sorry. I seem to have misread the situation.” Somehow he managed to sound smooth and restrained, even as his mind worked frantically to do damage control. “I’d understand if you—”

Whatever he would have babbled out would never be known as Eggsy gripped the edges of his collar and yanked him forward into an enthusiastic kiss of searing heat that swiftly turned into another and another. It was a heady, addicting thing, kissing Eggsy. Better than the sharp burn of the best scotch.

The glass was abandoned on the nearest flat surface in favour of drawing Eggsy’s body closer and allowing his hands to freely roam, tracing every hard line, angle and curve of him, from the solid, defined muscles of his back to a narrow waist and his full arse, and god, how had he gone so long without this?

“Fuck, Harry,” Eggsy breathed, pulling back just enough for Harry to see how his lips gleamed wetly. “I’ve been waiting ages for this.”

“Forgive this foolish old man,” Harry said, moving to kiss the sharp mantle of his cheek, his temple, the curve of his neck in silent apologies.

Eggsy tipped his head back to give Harry more access, sighing, “I’d forgive you anything if we can take this to the bedroom right the fuck now.”

Against his hot, damp skin, Harry smiled.

Of course, in the haze of lust and joy of revelation, he had forgotten how much of a chore stairs were for him, or how he usually underwent this humiliating task with no one around to witness how slow-going it was, how much he had to brace himself against the banister and how, on particularly bad days, he had to take breaks at the mid-floor landing.

But Eggsy didn’t say anything or insisted on helping him in order to move things along more quickly; he remained a steady, quietly reassuring presence behind each step of the way. But by the time they reached Harry’s bedroom, the urgency that sang through his veins had waned, leaving an acute bout of self-consciousness in its wake. He was old and broken and ugly. The pains in his body, revived during the short but exhaustive climb, reminded him of how he was and always had been the worst thing to have happened to Eggsy.

“Hey.”

The touch to the side of his face, the scarred and ruined side, startled him from his increasingly sour thoughts. Eggsy was close, looking at him with so much adoration that Harry forgot how to breathe.

“You with me?”

Harry swallowed, leaning too sensitised skin into Eggsy’s callused palm. “It’s suddenly occurred to me you’re making a terrible mistake.” And at Eggsy’s creased brow of confusion, he added, “You deserve better than what I have to offer you, my dear boy.”

It didn’t lessen the frown marring Eggsy’s lips, which only tightened into a determined line. “There’s no one else I want more in this world than you, Harry. It’s always been you,” Eggsy said fiercely, cupping Harry’s face with both hands now and pulling him into a kiss that sought to convey just as much. “Please, lemme show you.”

And god help him, he was too weak to resist, allowing his body to sink into Eggsy’s young, strong hold, trusting him to bear it.

Eggsy’s hands slipped from his face down the length of his body, blazing a trail of sensation in their wake. It had been so long since Harry had last been touched. His body was highly attuned to each pinpoint of Eggsy’s fingers until they alighted on his belt buckle. He used the convenient handhold to urge Harry forward, until Eggsy’s lips and teeth could scrape against his neck beneath the corner of his jaw. It caused him to shudder involuntarily, to press the lower half of his body against Eggsy in a primal need to relieve the pressure.

Eggsy both pushed and pulled, nimbly undoing his belt and then the fastenings of his trousers to slide a hand beneath the fabric of his boxers and grind the heel of his palm against Harry’s hardened cock in a shock of touch both fantastic and not nearly enough.

“Eggsy—” His hands instinctively went to bracket Eggsy’s hips, then to slip round to his front in a bid to wrest back some spiralling control, but Eggsy withdrew his hands from Harry’s trousers to seize his wrists and halt their progress. 

“Lemme show you,” he repeated, hanging weight upon each word, and at long last, Harry could only nod, and, prompted by Eggsy’s nudges, let himself be guided down onto the bed, supine and oddly vulnerable.

Eggsy started with his glasses first, gently pulling them off and carefully setting them aside on the nightstand before pressing a kiss at the rough, scarred patch of skin beneath his empty eye socket. It made Harry want to turn his face into the mattress, but Eggsy’s lips caught his in the act of doing so, pressing him down, opening him up until he forgot everything but the way Eggsy’s tongue licked into his mouth and how heavy and solid his body felt over and against him. He so badly wanted to surge up and reverse their positions with a prowess he no longer possessed that it _ached_ , and in distraction, his hands clenched at the loose folds of fabric of Eggsy’s hoodie instead—Christ, the boy hadn’t even undressed.

As if reading his thoughts, Eggsy reluctantly drew away and sat up, resting his weight on his knees straddling Harry’s hips. He didn’t break his gaze with Harry as he shrugged off the hoodie and threw it to the floor. The plain white t-shirt was next, revealing his glorious expanse of muscles that Harry was helpless to keep from running his hands over, enjoying the way Eggsy’s obliques tensed and flexed beneath his palms.

It seemed Eggsy wanted to level the situation for he began to unbutton the rest of Harry’s shirt, revealing a physique that still bore testament to his years of Kingsman training, but was a far cry from what it had been, he knew.

“You’re too skinny,” Eggsy muttered in concern, feeling along prominent ribs and a broad sternum unmasked by loss of muscle. “Not enough good meals in you.”

“I think earlier tonight certainly went a long way towards rectifying that,” Harry said as he gingerly sat up enough to aid Eggsy in removing the garment entirely from his person.

“I’ll have to make sure there’ll be more of ‘em,” Eggsy replied, scooting back on his knees to first remove his shoes and socks and then actually massage his feet. It felt unconscionably good, which of course meant it was objectionable.

“I am capable of undressing myself, you know,” Harry said to relieve the absurdity he felt in being so...well-tended to, he supposed. 

“I know you can, just...not tonight, yeah? Stop being so self-reliant for once.”

As Eggsy continued to press his thumbs into the arches, Harry sighed and felt himself relaxing anyway, and all too soon, Eggsy was pressing a kiss to his ankle and then crawling back up to pull off Harry’s trousers and boxers entirely with the brief assistance of his raised hips.

And that was him, the whole of him, served up to Eggsy’s scrutiny: the scars, the depleted muscle mass, the too prominent bones and greying hair. An imperfect creature, he knew himself to be, one that could mask flaws with a well-cut suit, but in the heat of Eggsy’s ravenous gaze and the tender way his hands smoothed up his thighs, in the way Eggsy pressed his lips to his pulse thudding rapidly in his femoral artery, Harry felt _desired_ in a way that shattered him.

“Please,” he croaked as Eggsy’s warm breath ghosted across his hip bone, mouth circling ever closer to his aching cock but always just barely brushing past in favour of laving at the skin of his lower abdomen or at the sensitive crease of his thigh. “Please.”

Eggsy finally took pity on him, and when his mouth sunk over his length, Harry groaned, barely able to clamp down on the instinct to thrust up. Of course Eggsy was adept at this, as he was with anything that involved his body, with a tongue that swiped broadly at the underside of his cock in the upstroke that ended with teasing his foreskin back. He wished he were at a better angle to watch, but contented himself with the fulfillment of other senses. Harry was panting, almost too loud in the overbearing silence, but also deliciously indulgent. There were the wet sounds of Eggsy sucking at him, his choked off groans, as if he were afraid of disturbing someone in the other room.

He almost cried out in protest when Eggsy pulled off him with a wet slurp, but it was only to slip his own fingers into his mouth, coating them thickly in saliva and then reaching behind Harry’s bollocks to circle his rim in unspoken question.

Harry could only nod, sucking in a harsh breath as he felt Eggsy slip one finger in. It burned, just a little, as Eggsy began thrusting his finger in and out and around, stretching the tight muscle there. It was a strange feeling to be touched there again, but not altogether a bad one, and it was made better when Eggsy’s mouth returned to his cock in earnest, so much so that he barely winced when Eggsy slid in a second wet finger.

And when Eggsy’s fingers curled up inside of him, _just so_ , Harry gasped out a moan and didn’t know whether to thrust up or bear down, caught between Eggsy’s sinful mouth and those wicked fingers that, now that they had found their desired target, began to massage his prostate ruthlessly. He settled for curling his hands in Eggsy’s hair, feeling the way his head bobbed up and down over his cock.

The pressure was unrelenting, so good, he hadn’t felt this good in so long, had forgotten how, and the rediscovery of it almost brought him to tears. His toes curled, he could feel the sweat break out across his heated skin as more and more of himself felt rattled loose from the confines of his body.

“Eggsy. I’m going to come if you don’t—” Harry choked out and was almost embarrassed at the long, low moan of disappointment he emitted when Eggsy stopped.

He didn’t know what picture he presented now: dishevelled, shivering, wrecked, perhaps. Whatever it was had Eggsy suddenly moving up to claim his lips again, licking in so that Harry could taste himself on Eggsy’s tongue.

“Harry,” Eggsy murmured, breathing heavily in a way that showed he wasn’t so unaffected himself, not by the flushed skin or the dilated eyes when he looked at Harry in molten want. “Can I…?”

“Yes, yes,” Harry agreed all too readily, and his answer was met with an enthusiastic peppering of kisses. “It’ll have to be...I can’t...I’m not as…”

“We’ll go slow, yeah?”

“Perhaps like this,” Harry suggested, urging Eggsy off so he could gingerly turn onto his side, pillowing his head in the cradle of his folded arm. It wasn’t the most ideal position, and certainly not one he would have preferred, but he couldn’t trust his limbs to support him otherwise.

Eggsy didn’t seem too bothered by the suggestion either if the way his eyes glazed over were any indication. “Yeah,” Eggsy said. “ _Yeah_. You got—?”

“Nightstand. Top drawer.”

Harry closed his eyes and concentrated on breathing evenly as he heard Eggsy rifle through the drawer for lube and condoms, which was perhaps somewhat over-optimistic on Harry’s part given he hadn’t had much use for either in a long time. Eggsy made a victorious noise when he located what he was searching for, and the easy way in which happiness lit up his face was always a beautiful sight to witness.

He watched Eggsy stand up and finally remove the rest of his clothes, presenting Harry with a body that was in peak condition, the perfect example of youthful vitality and male beauty, all flushed pale skin, fine golden hairs and a smattering of moles that Harry wanted to map with his tongue. His gaze fell to Eggsy’s cock, long and full and thick. It made his mouth water and he vowed to one day give it the thorough appraisal it deserved. 

And then Eggsy was advancing and pressing up close behind him, a wall of heat at his back, hard cock pressed up against the crack of his arse, an almost odd parody of spooning were it not for the way his lube-coated fingers had slipped into him and were loosening him further, making occasional brushes against his prostate that were driving him mad.

“This okay?” Eggsy kept asking, breathing the question against his ear, until Harry reached the end of his tether and snapped out, “I’m not going to break, for god’s sake. If you don’t fuck me this instant, I’m going to send you on a long-term surveillance mission to Greenland,” which made Eggsy huff in laughter.

“As my king commands.”

There was the crinkle of foil as Eggsy tore open the condom packet and Harry craned his neck to watch him roll it on, giving his fat, reddened cock a few firm strokes to liberally coat himself in more lube.

Then he was skirting up even closer to Harry, nudging his thighs apart and bracing one of his legs over his own. Harry felt the blunt head of Eggsy’s cock press against him and tried to relax as Eggsy began to push in. The burn was immediate and the stretch was greater than he had anticipated, even though Eggsy moved painstakingly slowly, if unrelentingly. The fingers of his free hand gripped the sheets tightly as he tried to breathe through the discomfort.

“It’s alright,” he assured before Eggsy could ask. “Just…it’s been awhile, I’m afraid.”

And in a way, even the pain was a relief, a new sensation to focus on other than his body’s usual unending parade of afflictions. It was sharp and definable, yet manageable. It had a beginning and an end. When Eggsy’s hips were finally flush against his arse, he paused with a groan, and they spent the next moments in stillness together. Eggsy was all around him, huge _inside_ him, his face pressed hotly into Harry’s neck, his hands now caressing Harry’s nipples, pebbling them into stiff buds, then moving down to his half-flagged cock, using the remainder of lube on his hand to stroke him back into full hardness and stoked urgency.

Harry shifted back, tried to grind his arse down onto Eggsy’s cock and Eggsy took the hint, starting up a slow, almost tentative series of thrusts that were angled perfectly and felt so divine, Harry felt his breath punched out with every snap.

“That. _Oh!_ That’s good. That’s good. Eggsy. Yes,” he moaned, trying to thrust back as much as he could in his limited position. “Please, a bit harder, if you will.”

“Fuck, Harry,” Eggsy groaned, his hips beginning to snap in a faster rhythm, his hand on Harry’s cock speeding up to match, the wet sound of flesh slapping against flesh permeating the air along with their stuttered breaths and groans. “So—fucking—polite, even when fucking.”

He was too far gone to think of a witty rejoinder, so he wound his free hand back to draw Eggsy’s mouth closer to his in a straining kiss that was messy and more a smearing of mouths against each other but it was enough as the heat pooled in his groin while Eggsy continued thrusting into him, and he cried out into Eggsy’s mouth when his vision whited out as he came. Eggsy gently fucked him through it, stroked him through it, leaving Harry a shuddering, gasping sprawl on the bed when he finally came back to himself.

“Come on,” he managed, reaching back to squeeze the lush firmness of Eggsy’s own arse and urge him on.

Eggsy’s thrusts renewed with concentrated fervour, nearly smothering Harry as he shifted and tried to fuck him into and possibly through the mattress, and it was all Harry could do but take it, feeling delightfully and utterly possessed as Eggsy focused wholly on chasing his own pleasure.

“So good, my boy, you feel so good in me, only you. Come on, come for me, my dear boy. My Eggsy.”

“God—Harry!” It was enough for Eggsy to cry out and tense against him, pressing as deeply into Harry as he achieved his own climax.

For several moments, they lied there, entwined in each other in a post-orgasmic stupour, breaths and heart rates gradually falling back into a normal rhythm.

Harry remained wonderfully blissed out as Eggsy eventually rolled off him and moved to the en suite to take care of the condom, but the feeling was rudely cut short when his glasses chirped on his nightstand, because Merlin couldn’t take a full day off to save his life. Dreading an impending emergency, Harry slipped them on only to encounter a small line of text at the corner of his vision instead of Merlin’s dour voice.

_Checked glasses as requested. Three hours of noise. What the bloody hell were you doing?_

Harry pulled off said glasses with a contemplative frown, but didn’t have time to process the significance before Eggsy returned with a warm flannel to clean them both. He supposed he should have felt guilty for his lack of attentiveness, but the soft look in Eggsy’s eyes instead had Harry coaxing him to lie back down and then curling up close against him.

“As it would happen, sex-induced endorphins are a fantastic relief for pain,” he murmured against Eggsy’s shoulder. Admittedly, his arse was already promising a sore tomorrow and a limp that couldn’t solely be attributed to misfired nerves.

“You call me in when you get your next migraine,” Eggsy only partly joked, and Harry hummed in agreement.

“Harry,” Eggsy prompted after another long stretch of drowsy quiet, one which was lulling him into a satisfied slumber. "Why was you so upset yesterday?"

After running through a list of possible excuses and digressions, Harry decided to tell the truth. "Kingsman is nearly broke, and I haven't got a bloody clue how to fix it."

Whatever it was he was expecting, it wasn't for Eggsy to simply say, "Alright."

"You're taking this rather well."

"I've always had faith in you, Harry Hart, even when you don't have any in yourself."

Looking back on his life, Harry realised, _Huh. I suppose that's true._

"Alright, then," he said, knowing Eggsy was smiling.


End file.
